Weighted
by TheAngelStrikesBack
Summary: Perhaps the war never ended. The idea that the Reapers had absorbed the living into their collective consciousness and tricked them into believing a comforting lie was not unreasonable. It wasn't true, though - such a nightmarish existence would have hurt far less than the reality of the war's aftermath. Sequel to "Waiting", following the turian C-Sec officer and refugee girl.
1. Prologue

Weighted

Prologue

Being around people was never really his strong suit. Though, perhaps it was the crowds that bothered him, the noise that buzzed incessantly and reverberated as an ache across the plate on his chest. The Hierarchy had enough funds to send them half way across the galaxy to seemingly insignificant colonies but never enough to actually fix the scars of its soldiers. Although, perhaps it was a time issue more than anything else; nothing ever seemed to slow down, even when it should have.

He would always pass the time on those quiet stops searching for messages that would never come, trying desperately to ignore the quickly changing world around him. Despite the constant pull from his peers, he could never quite enter the same mindset of those who had always been in a perpetual state of war. Where his squad saw every stop as their last, he never really saw himself existing there at all; he had left himself tethered to the end of a relay message set adrift in radio static. If he was still the officer he used to be, he would have let things be, recognized the past for what it was and focus on helping to build a new life around him. He would have reveled in the victory day celebrations, sought comfort in those with shared heartache, even search for meaning through family as his brother did. Tertius Aquilin, for all his formal turian teachings and Citadel security discipline, just couldn't let it go. He just couldn't _be there_ , in the moment, and see beyond what was staring right at him.

And what had been staring at him on that particular afternoon drew his eyes up out of his omni-tool. Through the orange huge of his screen he noticed a little asari girl, slightly older than the state of peacetime, glancing through the silent video message he watched with a pair of oddly green colored eyes. He thought nothing of it at the time, assuming her to be the product of the 'baby boom' that followed during and shortly after the war on every populated world. This, of course, was especially true in the outer most colonies that had been so badly affected by the Reaper's onslaught. On the dusty, dreary back world where his squad frequently refueled between missions, nothing about the populace or their home had seemed that out of the ordinary. The charred remains of their previous lives had been slowly peeled away, settling as powdery ash over the newly sowed earth. It was clear they wanted nothing more than to get back to their lives, the only solid reminder of their despair looming along the sunset's horizon as a dark, disfigured mountain.

The little girl smiled when he nodded in acknowledgement, "Hello there. Can I help you with something?"

She nodded a reply, taking his right hand quickly. Though he hesitated, he received a dismissive wave from his brother after glancing over towards him, finding him tending to an argument between a merchant and another soldier. Helping with anything was better than standing there looking lost and, having nothing else to do, the little girl lead him away from the bustling center of town. They didn't wander very far before the buildings gave way to the wide open crop fields, the child releasing her grip and running over to the edge of tall, swaying reeds. He was confused at first as to what she wanted from him exactly, kneeling down next to her as she scratched away at the weeds and rocks nestled along the roadside. Eventually, however, she disturbed enough of the tangled mass of plant life to reveal a small, oddly shaped flower that, under the dim shadow of the setting sun, glowed a soft blue. With its bioluminescence reflecting in her hands, she gently plucked it and presented it to him, beaming.

"Oh, this is, uh, nice," he said kindly, although he wasn't entirely sure what to say beyond that.

"It's mother's eyes," she whispered softly, as if saying it any louder would cause it to blow away in the wind.

"Your mother has blue eyes?" he asked, and was surprised when she shook her head. The girl paused for a moment, though, correcting herself.

"Well, she didn't use to have blue eyes, but she did for a little while," she replied, taking the flower back. "She's with the Goddess now, but I can always find her here."

"I see." The war had certainly done a number on everyone and children were no exception. They were perhaps the worst to be affected, unable to truly grasp the horrors that had happened to them or their loved ones. It was far easier to tell them metaphoric stories than the unbridled truth; he was just glad he didn't have children yet. Still, that didn't prevent him from feeling a shared sorrow with anyone who had lost something, and everyone had lost someone. "I'm sorry that happened to your family. Your mother would be very proud—"

"You can find her here too," she interrupted, turning the flower over and examining closer. Lifting it up to him again, she smiled, almost completely oblivious to his previous remarks. It was as if she didn't recognize the permanency of death.

He humored her, though. "Find who? Your mother?"

She shook her head, gesturing to his omni-tool. " _Her_. I saw her just a minute ago! She's…where…"

Tertius sat back on his heels, watching her take the flower back for a second time in frustration. It was a distinct possibility that, on top of the terrible trauma a small Terminus world faced, isolation may have made classical symptoms of delusion so much worse. Her behavior seemed innocent enough and, if this had been about anyone else, he would have written it off as an overactive imagination trying to cope. As her big, bright green eyes stared almost right through him, however, he almost started to believe that she was actually seeing something he couldn't. It was that growing belief that casted an overwhelming shadow of dread, forcing him to stand away from the clutches of a potential reality he wasn't ready to be buried in. She blinked in surprise, Tertius tilting his head with a sigh.

"It's okay, maybe later," he said, extending a hand for her to stand. "Let's go find your mother, hm?"

She huffed sadly, nodding as she set the flower back into the dirt. Before she could reach for him, however, there was a sudden wave of screams and gunshots. The sounds echoed on the walls of the quiet village coming from where they had left, Tertius pulling his rifle off his back and arming it. He waved silently for the little girl to find shelter, finding that she seemed to already know what to do before he suggested it.

He had heard the same song and dance before. Even the pattern of gunfire was gravely familiar, recognizing it from skirmishes around other old battlefields. "The Twelfth Labour", they called themselves, something relevant to human mythology he never cared to learn. He barely cared to know what they stood for, only that they were mortal like every other cult, gang, or pirate group. They invaded areas that still had Reaper remnants, deeming certain inhabitants of these particular worlds as "damaged" or "infected" and murdering civilians on the basis of seemingly baseless criteria that no governmental organization could figure out. Though they had been an all but insignificant fringe group for years, their numbers had increased at an alarming rate; Tertius had unfortunately been subject to a few of their surprise attacks on colonies they had visited. There was usually minimal damage at any given encounter, considering the paramilitary group had a negligible amount of funds and, ultimately, an inadequate amount of firepower against something like a turian taskforce.

At least, that's the way it had always been before.

The moments that followed were a whirlwind of faded light and heat sinks, Tertius barely remembering how he got back to his squad. The dying light of the day had given way to dancing flames, structures taken apart and bodies littering the ground. He recalled his brother saying something in the haze, about how the enemy had changed tactics and weren't being discriminant in their targets, but all he could see were people rushing towards him. As he made his way back under cover fire, helping people along into a secure bunker area that had, until that point, remained a sealed relic, he managed to get to the door before he saw the little girl from earlier. His right arm extended quickly, managing to grasp onto her hand before—

—

A suffocated gasp filled his lungs as he sat upright, jostled from his nightmare to a dark and quiet room. His throat burned from the bruising stranglehold of his memories, feeling cold despite the almost sweltering climate. It only took a moment before he realized his reality, a sharp, sickening pain stabbing into his upper right arm. Rolling over quickly to his nightstand, he fumbled in the soft blue light of the outside between his omni-tool and an old medallion of a human holy man, planting his feet onto the carpet when he managed to turn the lamp on. There was a moment when he realized he hadn't taken a breath, shakily running his talons along the aging orange tattoos on his face. They were becoming as worn away as his nerve, angry with himself and his restless mind as he reached for the bottle of pain medication nearby.

Tertius stood in the presence of a quiet night, going to his open window to inspect the grounds. It seemed like even the Alliance members had become bored with the striking scenery and finally gone to bed, leaving the still cove to its peace. The water glowed as bright blue as ever, the flora along the mountains on either side of the facility illuminating like small torch fires in the darkness. He knew, objectively, it was a beautiful sight to behold, but he had grown disenchanted by it many sleepless nights ago. Clenching his jaw through the growing nausea, he turned away and made his way through the open bedroom door to the small kitchen on the other side of his quarters. Though only slightly bigger than his previous living accommodations, it felt almost twice as hollow, even more so in the large shadows casted by his dusty old furniture. There was a moment when he considered turning on his vid screen, maybe watch a news cast or vid, but the thought was fleeting for something more worthwhile.

Pouring a sliver of warm liquid from its hiding place under his sink, he took what pills he needed and walked back over to his desk in the bedroom. Papers were scattered about from the wind rustling them to the floor, Tertius remembering that he had been too tired to organize them properly. Seeing them separated so blatantly, though, made him chuckle; so much useless scribbling that no one save him and maybe a few humans could understand. Still, it was _his_ useless scribbling, and he was almost proud to see how far he had come from when he started years ago. A thought came to mind as he ordered them neatly again, sitting on the creaky metal stool he had found himself at so many times before. Another restless night called for another useless, scribbled letter, one that he hoped, someday, might finally send his spirit back to him.

* * *

A/N Uh...hi! It's been a while! For those of you who are new, this story is a squeal to "Waiting", found here: s/7940103/1/Waiting . For those of you who know this story, it's been a long, long, _long_ time coming and I'm sorry for the wait, (no pun intended). But we're here now and I'm happy to get back into it!

As a further brief summary, the events here take place five years after the epilogue of the last story, post-ME3 and destroy ending. Despite a near galactic-wide extinction event, peace doesn't last in the face of profiteering and old habits die hard. Terrible high jinks ultimately ensue. This story will be rated T momentarily, but may, (and, honestly probably will), go up to M. Topics include swearing, smoking, alcoholism, violence, physical and psychological horror, suggestive thematic elements, and tough topics associated with war and its aftermath. If anyone would like or needs a warning on these things, I'd be happy to provide it as a small note at the beginning of chapters that feature them.

Also, if anyone has any suggestions - grammar, story, or whatever - please let me know. I'm not perfect, my writing is still 'meh', so I could use all the help I can get.

Thank you kindly for stopping by, and I hope you enjoy!


	2. Liquid Mistress

Liquid [Mistress]

Every drop upon the window felt like an ice pick behind his eyes. The forecast hadn't called for rain, but the weather had a tendency to change at a moment's notice. It seemed to happen on days when the Alliance would get shipments in from Earth, specifically, though no one ever thought much of it beyond a few jeers of bringing a bad climate with them. If it had just been the rain he probably wouldn't have thought much of it, either.

"Spirits, again with this?"

The hushed grumbles of someone to his side pulled him out of his catatonic stupor to full blown headache awareness, sitting upright quickly with a lofty inhale. The sudden moment made him groan, feeling a hefty shove at his left shoulder. He wasn't sure if it had been intentionally avoided, but his brother was smart not to hit his right arm.

Even if he was justifiably angry enough to do so.

"Caien?" Tertius mumbled, glancing up as his brother reached for the glass still firmly fixed in his hand.

"Who else?" Caein retorted, shaking his head as he took a whiff of the previous night's fuming remnants. Tertius managed to regain enough sense to keep him from taking the glass for too long, however, Caien holding out his hands in frustration. "And what is this? You know how the higher-ups feel about—"

"This, yes, I _know_ ," he interrupted, swiveling in his seat to make his way tiredly to the kitchen. He gritted his teeth when he heard his knees crack. "I wasn't drinking, I just…need something to take my meds with."

" _Something to take my meds with_ ," he mimicked quietly, his mandibles flicking in agitation. "Fine, you don't want to talk about it—"

"I don't."

"So we're not going to bring it up again—"

"Which we won't."

"But can we at _least_ talk about _this_?" Caien playfully flung his arms wide as he twirled around the mass of papers the bedroom floor. He bent over to scoop up several pages of crumpled, off-white parchment, his brow plates furrowing in frustration. "I mean, what even is this? Weird little characters? Writing by _hand_? You know we have these handy things called communicators, omni-tools…even datapads, right?"

Tertius chuckled inwardly, taking his time wiping the glass clean before placing it up in a cupboard. If it was one thing he was never worried about, it was Caien never understanding what his writings were. Most of the time he would think it was research or some other boring language he had to pick up, but his brother was never one for understanding any of it. There was a reason why Caien remained with the reconnaissance division even after he joined the linguistics engineering unit; their older brothers might have been the scientists, but Tertius apparently held the rest of the genetic intelligence. What Caien lacked in academic ability, though, he seemed to make up for in social and empathetic grace. Unfortunate was the man whose brother didn't try to see him through the worst of his life.

"Let's see if this actually does translate to anything."

Well, he wasn't lacking in problem solving skills _that_ badly.

Tertius spun on his heels from his place at the sink to see his brother shifting through translators on his eye visor, squinting to make anything out of the inked lines. Before he even noticed Tertius sprinting towards him, Caien's shoulders jerked in surprised as the scraps were pulled forcefully from his hands, startle becoming quiet concern when he looked at his brother's downtrodden appearance. It faded as quickly as the few words he caught a glimpse of, watching Tertius shake his head with a hollow laugh. He knew who those letters were for, but it had never been something left so blatantly out in the open before. They were something Tertius kept so private despite being one of the few people who could read them, tucked away in small boxes or behind armor plating. Caien always assumed that writing them was cathartic for him, even if they were never returned. Seeing them like that, though, he could only begin to wonder what had happened.

"Yeah, they're just…" he paused, becoming quietly frustrated enough to begin ripping up the page. "It's nothing."

"Doesn't really look like nothing—"

"It's nothing," he snapped, pressing his talons just beneath his eyes. "It doesn't mean anything anyway. Just a bunch of scribbles."

Caien sighed after a time as Tertius organized what he could into a single drawer, placing his hands on his hips. "Look, you don't want to talk about this or that or any of it and that's fine, but, uh…you're late again."

There was a moment that Caien thought his brother was going to finally lose his temper. He always thought that day would finally come again, and considered it strange that it hadn't come sooner. Tertius never seemed to get angry at anything or anyone, for that matter; not since he had last seen him on the Citadel could he remember him raise his voice in an argument. In that moment, however, as he watched him press his hands into his desk with a heavy breath, he could almost feel how fed up he was with everything. Still, the moment was once again fleeting, Tertius slowly shuffling the previous night's paper remnants into his hands and folding them neatly.

"What time is it?" Tertius ask quietly, rubbing the back of his neck.

"0800," he replied, shrugging. "It's only an hour, but they sent me up here anyway in case—"

"In case I could finally be kicked from the mandatory payroll, right?" he waved a hand with a chuckle, but it faded seeing his brother remain concerned over his self-depreciating humor. "Sorry, I…I didn't mean it like that. Look, I'll meet you down in a few."

"Mm," Caien hummed disapprovingly, shifting the armor around his collar. "Be down in 10, okay? The Alliance is getting a new shuttle in today and you know how much those white robed patients of theirs creep me out."

Tertius nodded in agreement and watched as his brother made his way out, barely making it until the door closed before collapsing at the end of his bed. There was a weight set heavily around his neck, wrapping around the inside of his carapace and digging into the sides of the plate on his chest. He pressed his hand against the thin metal separating his heart from the world by mere millimeters, trying to push it back in at least for one more day. Having been on that particular world for almost a year was starting to take its toll, finding that, even if he only had less than a year left of service, that day couldn't come soon enough.

Putting on his usual uniform and light armor, he made sure his gloves were on straight and rolled up his forearm, pulling at the side of his face before heading out. The stairs leading down from his second story apartment were still wet from the thick fog of dawn, the air so humid it could probably be cut with a knife. Turning a corner, the misty, tropical beach was sizzling from the light rain cascading down from the mountains, the cove's waves gently cutting the silence of the otherwise lifeless morning. As he rounded the corner out of a small corridor, he could see he brother staring off into the distance, noticing a shuttle breaking through the gray atmosphere and finding a path to the opposite side of the facility. Since the grounds were separated between salarian and turian cooperative excavations and whatever the Alliance happened to be busying itself with, they very rarely ever had to see what came out of their sporadic deliveries. That wasn't to say, however, that the troops never mingled in common spaces. One of the reasons Tertius hated his living quarters, among other things, was that it was nearest to the recreational patio where many, _many_ late night games of legal vices would be had. It wasn't like he never participated, but there had been enough arguments at the crack of dawn to warrant a curfew that was never actually followed.

"Hey, if you stare up like that for too long your neck might get stuck that way," Tertius quipped, patting his younger brother on the shoulder as he continued on down the designated cement path.

Caien followed quickly, his voice low despite Tertius being the only other person around. "Do you ever notice that it only ever gets like this when the Alliance comes back with a new set of people?"

Tertius could feel his eyes roll into the back of his head. "Not this again…"

"I'm serious!" Caien exclaimed, digging his boots into the muddy ground as the walkway gave way to a steeply inclined mountain path.

"M'hm," he mused, running his fingers through the passing foliage. Most of the leaves still had their distinctive blue glow present enough to show the creases in his weathered gloves. "This is a tropical world, Caien. It's going to rain."

"But it's not just that," he countered. "It's the way it rains. Haven't you ever stopped to think of how it feels almost surface level? It's not cold like it came from high atmospheric clouds."

"It's probably from the heavy fog," he replied, humoring him. "Having mountains near an ocean front can cause weird conditions."

"You have to admit, we've only ever seen this on days when that shuttle comes in."

As they reached the natural landing nearly two-thirds up the mountainside, Tertius looked back to find Caien gazing up again, watching the transport break from the speed of sound and part the clouds for a fleeting glimpse of the sun's rays. He was holding out his hand thoughtfully, watching as the droplets collected and rolled away through his fingers.

"I know it sounds crazy, but it…just kind of feels sad, you know?"

"What's sad?"

A familiar voice broke the two brother's from their distance with reality, Tertius glancing over his shoulder as Caien turned at a swift pace towards their original destination. Out of a mouth of a massive cave entrance was Keeda, wiping away the mist as it fell on her helmet visor with her other hand firmly planted on her hip. Though her quarian frame was dwarfed among most things, her husband always seemed to be just the right height.

"Just the weather, _saera_ ," Caien said reassuringly, placing a hand at her waist and pressing his forehead as near as possible to hers. "How did you sleep?"

"Fine," she huffed, pulling away to step inside the more covered area. "I'm sorry I couldn't come up here this morning with you. Readjusting for atmospheric conditions is getting tedious."

"It's alright," he replied, motioning with a nod behind him. "I had to go and get this one up anyway."

"Oh?" She watched as Tertius walked up next to them, unease in her voice. "Did you have trouble sleeping again, Tertius?"

"No, not any more than usual," he said, brushing away the water collecting on his armor. He paused when she continued to stare in that same motherly way she always did, even if her eyes were barely visible. "Don't worry about it! I'm fine, really."

"I'm always going to worry," she answered matter-of-factly as her brother-in-law patted her on the back.

"I know, I know, and I appreciate it," Tertius nodded, attempting to walk away to his station before anything else could be said about it. Clearly he needed to learn how to walk faster.

"Oh, by the way," Keeda waved after him. "Dr. Chakwas wanted a word with you! She's over in the foreman's area."

Tertius waved a dismissive hand behind his head as he kept walking, shouting over the dull sounds of drilling and other miscellaneous construction. "If you see her, tell her I know and I'll be there later."

Keeda crossed her arms tightly to her chest, holding her elbows. Though her dark blue suit always hid her displeasure, her emotions would always manifest themselves in a subconscious tapping of her right foot. Caien flicked a smile, wrapping an arm over her shoulder.

"You sure he's alright?" she asked quietly. "It's just not like him to be so passive with work."

"You didn't know him before the war," he jested. His mandibles pressed against his face, however, when he could feel her concern turn to agitation. "Really, though, he's okay. It's just been a lot. _All_ of it's been a lot. Being discharged from active combat, coming here, cramming his head so full of new languages it'd make an A.I. blush."

"Among other things," she said softly, pausing for a moment in thought. "I'm not so sure linguistics was the best choice for him. He keeps to himself so much and it worries me that maybe he's missing someone to talk to besides those dusty books and cracked relics."

"Yeah…" Caien replied slowly, the words on the paper he once held seared onto the back of his eyes. "I'll go have a word with Dr. Chakwas and see if she can't get to the bottom of it. Then, if he's up for it, maybe we can have a game night or something."

"Ooh, maybe that little dice throwing game the Alliance marines always play! Crabs? Crusts?" she said excitedly, Caien nuzzling the side of her neck.

"Something like that."

Farther into the dark, looming cavern, artificial lights flickered against the inky, translucent stone that extended from the floor into the shadows overhead. Salarian researchers were already hard at work transcribing anything that might resemble petroglyphs out of mere scratches or isolated cuts; several hundred million years might wear away even the most hardened surfaces. An ancient life long gone seemed to have recorded their history in detail, but it was almost impossible to figure out where it began.

After the events of the war, the small salarian colony revealed what they had been working on throughout the course of the Reaper invasion – that something somewhere on the planet was producing an almost unstoppable communication frequency. Every signal that was ever sent out was not only boosted, but cleared of any interference to about the distance of the planet's moons. Strangely, even if a message had been encrypted, the signal was made perfectly readable before it ever left the atmosphere. The salarian's originally thought they could use whatever was creating such a powerful frequency in place of the communication relays the Reapers had been destroying. That is, until they stumbled upon the opening of that very cavern, only to discover that the signal was coming from the planet _itself_.

While the runes depicted the always assumed relationship with the Leviathan species, and therefore the Reapers, no one had deciphered just how far it went or what that association entailed. The timeline appeared to be scattered, like it was recorded in remembrance at first and then told backwards with no definitive conclusion, if any of it was even being read right. Every new revelation between the vines growing through the cracks became one more empty space in the massive puzzle, the blue light of their flowers trying to illuminate their knowledge but casting an even greater shadow upon it. Though the salarian's had reached out to the Hierarchy, and sometime later the Alliance, for help, the years dwindled on without much resolution. Tertius found himself as another set of eyes that couldn't pull himself away from it, but at least it kept his mind preoccupied.

He approached his work station towards the back of the area, slowing his pace as he neared the large machinery working diligently. Though a great deal of work was still being done at surface level, there was another group working on clearing a colossal, ancient hole that extended almost vertically down into the mountain. Surrounded by scaffolding and warning signs, the pit always seemed to swallow any light the workers shined into it, its edges covered in thriving plant life that appeared to be trying to escape any way it could. The sight would draw him to stare each time he passed it, though it was unsettling enough not to linger on it for too long.

Though other crew members would pass by each day, telling him of the latest finds, what the salarians agreed to share, and the otherwise idle chatter of an uneventful morning and afternoon, none of it really stuck with him. His time was instead best spent transcribing wall rubbings into clean drawings, something he found himself doing quite frequently due to the nature of the stone's inability to be photographed. There was just something so peaceful in the way the lines glided across paper, noticing every detail had been made with the utmost care and consideration to stand the test of time. A labor of love, as his human cohorts would say, a subject that both fascinated and horrified him at times when it came to some of the scenes accompanied by Reapers. In the particular image he had been working on for several days, a group of faceless, bipedal individuals held up a cloth with a large flower blooming from it to an obvious silhouette, bowing not just towards the Reaper, but to the flower itself. It was a strange yet oddly beautiful image that he could lose himself in just long enough to have the hours tick by, his back cracking loudly when he heard the bell for the second shift to arrive.

Organizing his things nearly, he silently slipped out without another word, taking in a deep breath of the clean ocean air as he headed back down the mountainside. Though the sky remained overcast, the rain had let up into a misty haze, Tertius discovering that his boots sank into the rich, dark soil as he took his time heading back to the facility. Despite having the afternoon off, he knew it didn't come without a price, and he was dreading sitting down in a comfortable lounge chair more than fighting his inability to sleep. The slowest pace he could go wasn't slow enough, he felt, and so he continued to walk down the shoreline away from his apartment and the medical offices to nowhere and staring at nothing in particular. It wasn't until he wandered into a smaller, covered patio, glancing over to the commotion on the Alliance side of the base, did he pause in thought.

While the Alliance made regular deliveries, very often it was for simple packages or mail. On a few occasions, though, they would see a passenger shuttle land at a designated area that was usually just out of view unless a person went looking. These particular days were always quieter than most, almost always followed by whispers of who their new guests might be, although they would always be the same – Always human, always in white, loosely fitting uniforms or robes, and always with their eyes covered. It was that last part he knew bothered most, and it didn't help that none of the marines or staff working with these individuals would say who they were or why they were there. The only information they had ever been given was that they were "patients" there for treatment of some affliction and, despite pressing their own unit leaders or government officials for more answers, they were always told to leave it at that. It was the Alliance's burden, after all, and no one else's.

Though his brother was as nervous as most other people on the island about it, Tertius couldn't help but wonder not only about the patients' appearance, but the soldiers accompanying them. There was a lot to be said about a fully armored, Kassa Fabrication wielding infantry guiding what ultimately amounted to invalids into a secure location, their helmets shielded and sealed tightly every time they arrived. Just staring at them gave him a headache, and that moment was no exception; it felt like a low-pitched hum was ringing in his ears as he watched them go by. It wasn't enough to make him turn away, however, leaning against one of the wooden poles holding up the patio's roof.

After a time, as the numbers slowly dwindled to only a few stragglers, he noticed the marines took on a more attentive stance as a livelier individual walked down the shuttle's ramp. The woman's eyes were still covered like the rest, her black hair messy and chopped without any particular reasoning, but her demeanor was certainly happier than the rest. Her arms waved about as she spoke, walking in a way that didn't appear to be encumbered by her blindness at all. Next to her was a more solemn figure, her wide hood raised just over her eyes to shield her from the weather. He couldn't quite make out her appearance, but there didn't seem to be anything covering her face save for a bandage along her right jawline. She must have been one of the caretakers, he figured, considering there were a number of them that would walk around on occasion in the same garments as their patients.

When the two women came to the end of the ramp, he looked on as they hesitated, the woman with dark hair fussing with her gloves. The quieter woman calmly took her hands in hers and said something inaudible, fixing her hair and tightening the collar of her robe around her. Though he couldn't see anything above the tip of her nose, he could tell that she spotted him from a distance, pausing and becoming almost statuesque.

There was a moment when the world became still, the sounds around him dulling strangely as he shifted uncomfortably on his feet. Inexplicably he could feel a heavy weight press against his chest, like hands holding onto his lungs and pressing him into the ground. The more the woman stared, the more his sense of unease turned to unbridled curiosity, a seed of speculation being planted in his mind for their predicament. Every so often the air would glitter with refracted light, hovering between them like curtains that floated over a strange, mutually shared feeling he couldn't quite describe. That moment was fleeting, however, as a warm rain began to cascade from the clouds again, the two women and remaining Alliance forces making their way quickly into the building.

Caien was right. It did feel sad, though perhaps not for the reason anyone would have guessed.

He took his time returning to the other side of the facility despite the weather's onslaught, his mind elsewhere. Unbroken lines of questions that might have been considered dangerous under any other circumstance ran in loops at the back of his throat, unsure whether he should even be uttering them to himself. The Alliance's business was their own, but it was a hard sight to just forget. Standing in front of the entrance to the medical facility, however, was enough to set those thoughts aside, sighing inwardly as the automated doors slid open.

The burning stench of a sterile hall greeted him, brightly lit with long, artificial lights guiding him to a secretary's desk. Behind the large, rounded piece of furniture sat a young Alliance scientist with bright, wild red hair, her eyes transfixed to a spot in the ceiling where a water spot was starting to form. She was always in a daze every time he came in, although he figured there wasn't much to do in the psychiatric section of an otherwise sane research institution. Out of respect for her profession and her own sanity, he would always cough loudly enough from a distance to help her snap back into reality.

"Good morning, sir!" she said gleefully, sitting upright and fussing with whatever happened to be in front of her at the time. He noticed on that particular morning it was a box of unopened pens.

"Good afternoon," he droned a response, his body already leaning towards his destination.

"You're here for your monthly psychological evaluation, correct?"

Tertius sighed with a nod, "Yes, as always."

"Okay, I just need you to sign in here," she instructed, passing him a wooden clipboard with a list of names.

It was funny to him that despite all of the galaxy's technological advancements, most of the time people were reduced to using the most rudimentary of tools. That was another thing about the planet –often data would just up and go missing, like it was read and consumed by the airwaves if it was left unattended to for too long. The salarians chalked it up to damaged devices and outdated servers, but the results were still the same. Every time he had to sign in, it would always be on paper; funnily enough, most of the names on the list were in human language characters. It seemed like the Alliance members were seen much more frequently than any other group.

"Thank you!" the scientist said after he placed a solid "x" near his name. "Dr. Chakwas will see you in room 145!"

"Does it ever change?" he chuckled, watching her blink slowly to process what he just said.

"Oh, uh...I guess not," she smiled nervously. "I'm sorry, force of habit."

"It's fine, you're doing good," he reassured as he began to walk away, hearing the young secretary exhaling in relief. "Just try to stay awake until the end of your shift."

"Will do, sir!" she shouted after him much louder than necessary. Tertius could almost feel her face become as red as her hair with embarrassment.

As he rounded the corner in the empty gray and white halls, he finally came to the open door of his aggravation. While the psychological tests were mandatory, and for good reason, he never felt like they amounted to much. A half hour would be wasted discussing emotions he denied ever having, nightmares he never wanted to admit were real, and topics he didn't suspect an older human woman would quite understand in regards to a turian outlook. Still, he would always find Dr. Karin Chakwas sitting back cross-legged in her chair, holding onto a notebook thoughtfully with her nearly white hair held back in a small ponytail. Her standard issue blue and white uniform was as crisp and clean as the day she had first put it on, leading him to believe she very rarely ever got her hands dirty. The aged and slightly charred Serrice Ice Brandy high on the shelf behind her, however, suggested otherwise.

"Good afternoon, Lieutenant Aquilin. Please take a seat," she said, gesturing to the curved, dark gray couch against the opposing wall. The room itself was only a desk, a few shelves, three smaller chairs, and the couch he traveled too.

"Afternoon, doctor," he replied, sitting forward with his elbows on his knees as he sank into the well-worn cushions. "And you can call me Tertius, remember?"

"Ah, yes, my apologies," she smiled, quietly writing something down. It seemed like she would forget every time he came in. "This memory of mine isn't what it used to be. If all else fails, fall back to the old honorifics."

"M'hm," he mumbled, lacing his fingers in front of his mouth.

Perhaps purposefully, the doctor's complacent demeanor wasn't too hard to read. He knew that she recognized that he wanted to be anywhere else, yet the lines beside her eyes remained creased in a sympathetic smile. "How are you feeling today, Tertius?"

"Fine," he groaned. "No different than any other day, I suppose."

"You suppose?" she pondered, letting a pause sit between them while he stared up at her in annoyance.

There was a deep rumble in her chest as she sighed, placing her clipboard in her lap and rubbing the bridge of her nose with her index finger. Spinning slowly in her chair, she slightly pointed her toe and looked out into the hall, pushing the door until it quietly closed.

"I'm not going to beat around the bush with you today," she continued hearing the handle click into its frame. "You know these questions are simply a matter of fidelity."

His hands moved to his knees, leaning his head back against the wall. "I'm sorry, doctor, that wasn't fair of me. I'm just...tired."

"You've seen me, what? Once? Twice a month for a little over a year now? I know when something's troubling you and I'm sorry it had to be this afternoon," she said gently. "You've had trouble sleeping again, I take it?"

He nodded, "Yes, but it hasn't been that bad."

"Not that bad?" she repeated skeptically. "How many hours have you been sleeping a night?"

"Four, maybe five," he replied confidently.

"Four or five hours a night for how many nights?" She flattened her lips dishearteningly when he remained silent. "Tertius, you have to tell me when this starts happening. It's—"

"I know, I know," he murmured, bobbing his head back and forth lightly. "Fidelity."

"It's not just a matter of memory aptitude," she continued. "Is it the pain that's keeping you up? Have you been having nightmares again?"

"A little of everything, I guess," he sighed, waving a hand as he spoke. It was as if he were subconsciously swatting away the sparkles still in his eyes. "Look, I know command is concerned about my ability to perform. They've been at me for a while about this."

"I know you do," she said, entwining her fingers over her crossed knee. "Which is why I've stopped recording this conversation. Many people are concerned, and in order for you to get through this you need to be honest with me. I wouldn't be doing anyone any favors if we keep ignoring what's happening."

"I don't know what there is to say," he shrugged. "You know what happened, you know the dream, and you know that no matter what drugs you throw my way this signal going around is just going to keep bringing it back. What else do you want me to do?"

She hesitated for a time, resting her elbow on her armrest with her chin in her hand. He could tell there was something else weighing on her mind, something new. A cold spark of dread stabbed into the center of his spine and began to spread as she stood, going over the books on her shelf.

"Tertius, have you been socializing enough lately?"

He stood up straighter, his gaze narrowing. "I'm…sorry, I don't understand."

"You know, friends, family, the people important to you," she began smiling again, sincere but more empathetic than before. "Has the Hierarchy given you enough time to spend with them?"

"I would say so," he replied. Tertius wasn't one to speak poorly of his government, even if they got caught up in galactic bureaucracy occasionally. "I mean, you know my brother and sister-in-law like having game nights after work almost every week."

"I do, and I'm quite glad they've tried to make life here less dull," she chuckled, finally plucking a large, white book from the top shelf. "But is there anyone else you miss? Maybe that you haven't talked to in a while?"

He stared for a moment, groaning with a sudden realization that made the pain behind his eyes make a sudden reappearance. "Caien said something to you, didn't he?"

"Yes he did," she nodded, sitting back down to the sounds of him angrily mumbling to himself.

"What did he say?" he asked, rubbing away the tension growing in the back of his neck.

"He said that you've been writing letters to an old friend," she replied, her voice becoming somber. "He also said that you seemed lost when you spoke this morning. Did something happen or perhaps is it the letters themselves keeping you up?"

"Caien's the one that needs to get lost once in a while," he muttered, sitting back with a heavy exhale. "No, it's not the letters. They…help keep my mind focused."

"Who are the letters to?"

"Just an old friend," he said hurried, desperately wanting the conversation to end.

"Have you ever sent any of these letters?"

"I have." He paused, running his hand over the top of his head and crest. "I did."

"But you stopped," she assumed, tilting her head to keep an eye on his ever lowering gaze. "When was the last time you sent one?"

"Let's see, the last time was probably…" he trailed in thought, his left hand tapping his knee. "Six months? I've always sent it to the same place and it's never been returned."

"And have you ever gotten a response?" She waited for him to shake his head. "When was the last time you heard from this person?"

He clenched his jaw, holding his right hand within his left. "About six months before the Twelfth Labour strike. She was going to an Alliance base I never got the address to before the radio silence."

Her brow furrowed the more hushed his words became, her eyes softened with empathy. "Have you contacted the Alliance about her whereabouts? Do they have any record of her?"

Shaking his head once more, he finally stood slowly, rocking back onto his heels. "Doctor, I appreciate what you're trying to do, but I'm fine. I'll _be_ fine, just give me a bit more time. I think getting back to work would help the most."

Dr. Chakwas grinned as she stood to meet him, inhaling deeply. "You turians and your dutiful ethics. I can't fault you for it, but at least let me offer one suggestion."

Tertius stood firm at her request, watching her flip through the leather-bound text quickly. She took his right hand and placed the ornately detailed book in his palm, taking his other talons and placing them on top. There was a time when he could see her trying to think of something specific to say, tapping her fingers on the cover before letting it slip away.

"I think because you've been so diligent in your work, you haven't been given enough time to grieve," she said slowly.

"What? I'm not—" he began, interrupted as she raised a silencing hand.

"Hear me out," she continued. "I take it you're familiar with trans-Atlantic English?"

"I am," he answered, glancing down. Though he was unsure of the content, he read the title aloud to try to find any clues. " _A Teardrop on the Cheek of Time: An Empire's Tragic Monument to Everlasting Adoration._ "

"It's about a particular building back on Earth that has a lot of history."

"Sounds…interesting?" he tried to think of something nice to say, only to give a breathy response.

"Just do me a favor and read it," she laughed, patting him on the shoulder. "I think you'll find it relatable to your situation."

"The building?" he joked, Dr. Chakwas flinging open her office door.

"We'll discuss it on your next visit, alright?" she replied, shooing him with a wave. "And Tertius, if you have any other issues, please don't hesitate to come see me."

"Sure thing," he answered, his eyes transfixed on the odd, light-blue manuscript in his hands.

Dr. Chakwas's smile fell to the floor as she watched him turn the corner, crossing her arms. There was a long list of patients to see that month, but witnessing a turian so distraught was something that she never cared to see. It had been a long time since she had treated one so in denial of his own pain, and there was almost a subconscious desire to both help and to never see it again. Still, as with every phase of her life, there was no time to dwell on the fleeting reminders of the past, returning to her post to draw up the next case's chart.

It was something about the embossed gold lines reflecting in the dim afternoon sunlight that he couldn't quite look away from. His pace had become leisurely and thoughtful wandering back to his apartment, turning over the pages to find detailed pictures of more than just buildings – portraits of humans that existed half a millennia ago, their lives occasionally played out next to darkly printed text. Even if it would take him some time to translate the words accompanying the pictures, he couldn't help but feel pulled to turning its pages, recognizing that particular type of historical literature when he saw it. He was never one for romantic tragedies, but a favor was a favor, and no one else had to know he was reading it.

"Hey, Tertius!"

He almost instinctively knew to place the book inside the underpinning of his armor, ignoring the voice of his brother from a distance. If there was one person he didn't want to speak with at that moment, he had somehow come across him, despite being off his shift earlier than usual. Caien ran up to him with his mandibles raised in an awkward smile, catching his breath as they met at the edges of the recreational area. He followed as Tertius kept walking.

"You missed it! Raeus got himself stuck in the middle caverns again!" he said with a laugh, holding his chest to catch his breath.

It was undoubtedly funny, considering the man had been told several times not to go looking for petroglyphs too far into the cave and yet kept doing it, but Tertius was in no mood to discuss it. As he rounded the corner of the stairwell, he let out an affirmative hum, only making it up a few paces before halting in his track.

"So, uh, how did the appointment go?" Caien asked cautiously, watching it brother stare up at the underside of another flight of steps as he stopped.

"It went…fine," he answered, unable to find the right words to escape the back of his throat.

"Just fine?"

That was the moment Tertius would always remember that broke his patience. He could only take being asked that so many times consecutively before his real feelings manifested. There was a place deep down that he knew Caien meant well, as did everyone who inquired, but there was only so many times he could keep lying to others as well as himself.

" _Yes_ , Caien," he turned on his heels, keeping himself planted by clutching his hand on the guardrail, "and despite what you may believe, I can handle these things on my own."

"Wait, that's not what I—"

"If I wanted to discuss my past problems with the village shrink I would have brought them up a while ago," he seethed quietly. "Last thing I need is to have high command thinking I'm wasted on duty again."

Caien bobbed his head slightly, "But…you kind of were."

"And for the _last_ time, I wasn't drinking, but if I was, what I do on my off time is my business," he turned away, his footsteps heavier than usual. "Next time knock before deciding to wake me from whatever little sleep I can get."

He couldn't quite believe what he had done as he reached his apartment door and slammed it behind himself, placing his back against the wall. It was the sudden, striking silence that suddenly gouged into his chest, the wound dripping to his weary legs and causing him to collapse into a heap onto the large, empty couch. Every attempt he made to rationalize his behavior was carried on the wind, washing away the very thin, sandy layers of whatever amount of his pride he had left. Caien was nosy, he had been that way since they were growing up, but that was no excuse to keep shutting him out when he was trying to help.

Tertius sighed loudly, throwing off his armor and resigning to end the day before he made it any worse. Resting his head against the armrest and pulling out the book from his clothes, he stared at it briefly, running his thumb along the spine and letting the colors dance in his eyes in the dying sunlight. For some inexplicable reason, it almost hurt to look at; he found himself setting it aside because of it, reaching for his vid screen remote instead. There would be time enough for that later, and all he wanted was to shut his mind off with a good, nearly ancient black and white film from the pre-recorded Alliance network, finding himself barely able to keep his eyes open until he slowly drifted off.

The feeling of uninterrupted slumber would only remain a few hours, however, as he awoke with sickening pain that ran rampant from his right arm. It had lasted longer than he expected, but that, coupled with the stiffness in his neck from the wildly uncomfortable cushions, made him sit up with a groan. It was about time he changed into something more relaxed than his uniform anyway, though finding that the movie had ended and, unfortunately, the Alliance network was down was adding to his very rapidly growing list of discontent.

The sudden, sharp scent of cigarette smoke was what ultimately got him up. If ever there was a moment soldiers shouldn't be messing about on the recreational patio below his window, it was that calm, oddly quiet evening.

Slamming his hands on his windowsill in aggravation, he craned his neck to see a relatively dark, empty area, lit only by the fluorescent glow of the ocean shoreline. He knew it was coming from somewhere close, however, as his eyes began to water and the underside of his facial plates sting. Perhaps they were leaning against the building into the built-in walkway, making him even more frustrated that they couldn't just go for a walk with it.

"Would you please take that somewhere else?" he shouted, trying to restrain his anger. "Morning shift trying to sleep up here."

When there was no response, he closed the glass tightly, locking it to shut out any residual smell. The room would eventually become unbearably hot, as it always did when every fan wasn't running and every window wasn't flung wide open, but he could live with it for a few hours. He had no intention of going back to sleep for a while, anyway. Grabbing the small, human-centric book from his lounge table and throwing off the top half of his uniform to some dark corner of his bedroom, he sat back on his bed, calming himself down and absorbing every word carefully as he read.

Or, as some of the Alliance members would say, a labor of love.

—

 _Mary,_

 _It has been quite some time since I have written you. I am very sorry about that. It seems my ability to write human characters with my right hand has improved, though it has been an arduous process._

 _Caien has tried to convince me to travel back to Rannoch – something about taking care of his house for a bit while he and Keeda take assignment on Palaven. I know what they are trying to do and while I appreciate it, I do not think I can stay grounded for very long. You know I have never been very good at it, especially when there are more important tasks at hand._

 _I hope you are happy, wherever you are._

— _Tertius_

* * *

A/N - WELP, there went my plans to stick to a schedule. I really, _really_ didn't intend for this to take a month to publish and I don't plan on this being a regular thing. In consolation, I hope you enjoyed these 15 pages! :D

Also, like with the last story, I plan on posting any music I might have listened to while writing this. If anyone has any suggestions, please throw them my way! I love listening to new things.

This week, "On the Nature of Daylight" by Max Ritcher, from the Arrival soundtrack. (To be honest that movie had a lot of sway into getting me to write this story, so there's that): watch?v=rVN1B-tUpgs


	3. Mary

[Mary]

There are very few things in the universe that would make one stop long enough to pause and think of a singular, peculiar thing, however briefly. The moment her vision filled with tiny, gently sparkling dots, dancing silently in a way that felt close enough to touch, she found it odd how it brought one name to mind. Despite the heaviness in her body that kept her immobilized, she knew – or at least believed – that she was gazing at the terrible, inescapable void of space, unable to speak what hid as a frightened cry at the back of her throat. It was in that realization that she finally started to wonder where she was, wisps of greenish-blue light rising and falling in her peripheral vision.

Though her feet felt dragged down by gravity, her hair floated around her head like a halo suspended in water. She mentally noted the things she could still perceive – her cold fingertips, her tingling lips, and a dull pressure in her chest. It was that numb ache, a force like a tether anchoring from her sternum down out her back, that made her try to remember how she arrived there. The more she tried, the more her thoughts seemed to escape her, the stars growing brighter and the darkened void beginning to change. It appeared as if there were meteors flying from one light to another, a trail of white light dissipating behind them but hollowing out a tunnel in the sky. As they collided, smaller tendrils would suddenly burst from the opposite end.

In any other moment, the strange, growing chaos above her would have been enough to cause panic. There was nothing but complacency swimming through her mind, though, the lights before her almost starting to resemble the spider flowers of home.

 _"It's mother's eyes."_

A whispery echo hit the right side of her face like a warm breeze, unsure of the voice she was hearing. She could only think that it was perhaps some sort of delirium, hearing a leftover vid that she or a hospital worker left on the night before.

 _"Your mother has blue eyes?"_

Every muscle in her body tensed, feeling her eyes grow colder as they widened. Terror finally hit her as if the sky was falling, her thoughts reversing to the moment she regained some amount of consciousness. Their whispers continued to wash over her as she forced her head to turn towards them, her scarred cheek feeling hot against a glowing blue surface. For a brief, horrifying moment she could finally embrace the last thing she would ever breathe, somehow seeing him in a pale silhouette of tiny, dancing dots.

"Tertius?"

Uttering that word seemed to trigger the lead pierced through her to suddenly pull down, her vision pinching to a point until it was absorbed by darkness. Screams dimly echoed in the distance like a dying nightmare, hearing familiar voices for a time before those, too, faded into silence. Eventually she found she could open her eyes again, a quiet pain resonating in her chest.

She laid on her side with her head on her forearm, staring blankly at the dark, gray room. Running her gloved hand along the cold edge of the bed, she managed to glance over at the frosted window, halting the blue glow of the outside. There was a fleeting moment where she wished she hadn't remembered his name, that she had remained staring up at the light she hated so much instead of the metal walls she hated even more. It never happened, though.

"Mary, are you awake?"

She hesitated to respond, eventually rolling over and sitting up to meet a pair of similar eyes staring back at her. The woman sitting at the end of her bed held a great deal of concern in her demeanor, as she always would, running her fingers through her own shoulder-length blond hair. Mary sighed to see her companion get worked up again over such a regular occurrence.

"I'm fine," she groaned, her eye twitching as she rolled her neck. "What time is it?"

"Late," she replied, motioning to the clock on the dresser beside them. "Although they're still trying to get everyone settled."

"M'hm." Mary tiredly rolled on her knees to the desk lamp, tapping the base to turn it on its lowest setting. Grabbing an elastic band, she threw her hair up in a ponytail as she stood, heading to the bathroom. "Did I miss anything while I was out?"

"No," she smiled, clasping her hands as she raised a leg up between the two beds. "Some of the others are a little restless, though, even some a bit worse than yesterday. The doctors have been having a hard time getting them to sleep."

"Can you blame them?" she asked rhetorically, taking the replacement fixative from behind the bathroom mirror. "They must be terrified coming to a place they don't know and not really knowing why. I don't expect them to get used to it for at least a week, maybe two."

Replacing the bandages on her face was an embarrassingly tedious process, but one she refused to do half-heartedly. While gauze would have sufficed, and wrapped around her head nicely, she made sure both her scars and her eye were plastered down with waterproof adhesive cloth underneath it just to be sure. At least the rest of her attire - that being a floor-length, partially fitted white gown with a high collar and gloves that extended to her forearm - was easy enough, made to be used for both for sleep and day wear.

"Yeah, the noise from outside probably isn't helping either," she heard a reply, the woman in the other room now standing at the window. "But at least these walls help, huh?"

"Yeah," Mary replied quietly, slipping on her ankle boots. "I'll be back in a bit. I'm just going to have a quick word with the commander. Hold the fort while I'm gone, Anna."

"Sure thing," she chuckled, waving as Mary closed and locked the door behind her.

If she didn't know any better, she would have expected it to be midday with the amount of activity happening throughout the facility. She passed both healthcare providers and Alliance marines, each with their own tasks and concerns. With each white and green-accented hall she traveled through, the more she began to see the usual patterns; each two-door hall entry checkpoint would lead to larger and busier group of people. Her face remained stoic despite the growing amount of screaming and crying she heard. These people didn't know where they were and hated everyone and everything around them with more ferocity the worse their condition was. Her heart ached listening to their plight and the individuals trying to help, but her face would never show it.

As she reached the last set of security doors, she paused next to a fully-armored man staring through the windows to another door just beyond it, guarded by marines equipped to the teeth with bulky armor and shielded helmets. It bothered her to see them armed with such heavy weaponry, but it bothered her more knowing why they did.

"Did you ever get her to calm down at all?" she asked quietly, pressing her hand against the glass to peer closely through its tinted shield.

The man laughed tiredly as he removed his helmet. "I don't think that woman has ever known a day in her life where calm was involved."

Her fingers fell away as she turned, her lips flattened in agitation. "You know what I meant."

"Yes, _'manita_ , I know," he sighed inwardly, dark circles beginning to sprint laps around his even darker eyes. Running his armored fingers through his short hair, his eyes widened in an attempt to stay awake, finally looking over at her. "Seems no one is getting much sleep, huh?"

"No," she shook her head slowly, knowing what he was going to say next. "I don't think anyone will for a while."

"Bad dreams again?" he asked quietly, taking care to make sure no one in the general vicinity could hear them.

"They're always bad dreams," she shrugged, leaning her back against the wall beside her. "Some are worse than others."

"You have an appointment with the doctor tomorrow, right?" he asked, though he wasn't expecting a response. "I'm sure she'll find something that'll help."

"Just like all the others," she began to fume silently, the scars under her facial bandages becoming warm. "It's nothing. I've dealt with it up until now and that's been working just fine."

"Just fine, huh?" he repeated skeptically, watching her one exposed eye become a dagger aimed at him. He knew there wasn't much more he could say to at least hear the new doctors out, but her manner still concerned him all the same. Waving a half-hearted hand and turning to amble away, he continued, "Walk with me for a few."

She crossed her arms closely over her stomach as they left through the halls, the cries of the patients fading with each resealing of a door's security lock. Eventually they crossed the threshold into the main medical facilities, seeing a young scientist with bright, fiery red hair trying desperately to keep upright in her chair. The change in atmosphere was almost frightening, a deafening silence filling the gray halls until finally they came to the outside. The man beside her didn't even stop to admire their surroundings, as he had seen it recently all too many times before. Instead, he made his way to a small area with a few tables and chairs, sitting down with a heavy exhale with his head in his hands. Mary quickly followed suit, having seen the scenery many times before, albeit from a much longer time ago.

"So, _commander_ —" she began with a grin, silencing herself after hearing him loudly groan in protest.

"Don't you start," he said, sitting back with his legs outstretched. His frame almost completely dwarfed his seat; she was surprised that even the slightest movement didn't snap the chair in half.

"What? Isn't that what I'm supposed to call you now?" she jeered. "All I'm saying is a few more shiny medals on that uniform and we'll be calling you Captain Magpie."

His unrelenting glare was enough to make her chuckle lightly, causing him to smile. "You're lucky we're friends or you'd be stuck in a terrarium too."

" _You're_ lucky we're friends or you'd be stuck as a desk jockey," she replied, patting the sides of her dress pockets in the search for something briefly before sitting back. "Besides, don't you just _love_ babysitting duty?"

"If by babysitting duty you mean escorting some of the damn most powerful bioweapons this side of the universe, yeah, it's a lot better than a desk job," he answered, itching the faded tattoo winding along the side of his neck. "Besides, they would've needed to discharge me first if they were ever going to take me out of active combat."

"Not entirely sure how active this combat is, but whatever floats your boat," she shrugged, throwing her arms up dramatically after a moment. "Ladies and gentleman, in this tiny chair, former scrapper turned Alliance Marine that served under the great Commander Shepard in the near extinction event of the Great War, weighing in at 240 lbs-"

"230, and still all muscle, thank you."

"Commander James Vega!" She placed her hands over the sides of her mouth and mimicked cheering sounds, whispering praises in between that made him roll his eyes. "So, James, now that you've been the head of this program for the past six years, what do you intended to do next?"

"To get some sleep," he deadpanned, "and then let command know we arrived. You want me to tell them you're out past curfew?"

Her lips flattened disapprovingly, crossing her arms. "You want me to contact command and tell them you're out here bantering with me past curfew?"

He blinked slowly, bobbing his head back and forth in thought. "Fair enough."

A pause drifted into the night air as they stared out over the peaceful, illuminated cove, the glowing waves casting dark silhouettes that grew larger and faded with the tide. While James smiled in its serenity, Mary remained still, her mind in another place and time. She hesitated as she began to stand, scuffing her feet against the sandy cement.

"Hey, can you...can you write grandma? Tell her I'm still doing alright?" she asked gently, her words holding some semblance of remorse.

His grin dimmed with the light, glancing back to her. "Yeah, no problem. Anything you want to say specifically?"

"Oh, the usual," she sighed, stretching her arms over her head. "Tell her I'm doing fine back at the base, that they're still working on a cure, and that, no, I haven't found a future grandson-in-law to bring home to the next debutante ball."

Her exaggerated southern drawl within those last few words made him heave a hefty chortle, his eyes barely able to stay open. "Your abuela has always been a bit of a traditionalist."

"You're telling me," she huffed, pulling an item from each of her pockets. She could feel the disapproving stare at the back of her head as she fumbled with the lighter in her right hand, placing a stark white cigarette between her teeth.

"I wish you wouldn't do that," he stated, Mary taking a long drag before looking back at him. "At least pick up a different habit that doesn't involve hurting your insides."

"Yeah, well, I wish a lot of things were different," she replied flatly, flicking the lighter's lid closed and placing it back at her side, "but here we are."

"Here we are," he repeated solemnly, his head listing to the side in thought.

"Sorry," she smiled, "don't mean to be downer. I'll take my smoke-filled wallowing elsewhere."

He shrugged, "Why? It's not like we won't have to go back soon."

Mary pinched the burning stick between her thumb and forefinger to point to an area behind him, watching him look up over his shoulder at a plaque mounted next to the entrance. It was a long list of posted rules in a multitude of languages, although the largest seemed to be the "NO SMOKING" at the very top. He glanced back to her as she began to saunter away, unable to help the rising alarm in his voice.

"Where are you going?" he asked, sitting up while the small chair hooked to the sides of his armor. He was forced to physically bend the frame to get it off.

"Anywhere but here," she jested, turning on her heels and walking backward. "Why does it matter?"

"It matters," his voice rose, standing out away from the building to watch her more closely. "Where is _anywhere_?"

"Around the bend," she rolled her eyes, shaking her head. "I'll be back in fifteen."

"Make it ten," he answered, shifting his weight to head back inside.

" _Fine_ , whatever you say, _commander_ ," she flippantly saluted as she rounded the corner to an otherwise abandoned area.

She remembered the patio she hesitated at all too well. The white recessed lighting of the shallow stone steps lead up to the same reception area, the tall lamps darkened from the days of dinners and late night reading. Though the furniture was rearranged, some of it even replaced, she could clearly make out the chairs they used to sit in and the spots along the hip-high dividing wall they would lean against and discuss any number of peculiar things. Mary noticed how unusually numb she felt to it all, recollecting the bright red light that had swept over the galaxy and what supposedly had destroyed the Reapers. It left an almost bitter taste in her mouth knowing that's what most people believed.

It wasn't until she was towards the center of the area did she stop, staring out as she had done the night before. She could feel the hole in her heart begin to well with her memories, once again noticing the missing hammock between two much taller trees. The drool from a tiny asari child made her smile weakly, the warm breeze through her hair washing over her with a sense of relaxed contentment, his heartbeat—

Her reminiscing fell away from her, shattering into tiny grains of sand as she held her head low and watched the embers burn from her cigarette. Traveling quickly to the covered walkway constructed into the building, her feet grew heavier the closer she approached the far stairwell. The fondness of her previous life was once again becoming the kindling to growing anger. Her mind arranged all the darkened words and sharpened grievances that had been neatly buried just beneath the surface for years. She could almost count the ways she had rehearsed what she wanted to say, but she just couldn't help stopping in her tracks. Mary lingered at the base of the last window above, her eyes growing wider. Her breathing became heavy with each passing moment, the last remnants of the ashy paper in her mouth falling to the cement.

Finding the wall to place her back upon it, she slid down the smooth metal surface slowly, her hair trailing behind her head with her feet planted firmly to the ground. Her face was contorted to reflect the mounting sadness finally extinguishing her rage, unable to cry but too ashamed to hide her cowardice. He was right there. _Right there_. She should have shouted at him when she saw him from across the way, yelled a diatribe of obscenities when he shouted out the window that same night. Even then, though, as she sat lighting up another cigarette, she was just too afraid to actually face him. He was so close yet still so far away, wondering if he was even the same person she remembered.

It wasn't like she was the same person anymore.

"For all the Spirits that give me patience," a voice shouted out into the night, "can you take that foul smelling smoke _anywhere_ else?"

Mary closed her eyes and pressed her hand against her sternum, pain reverberating in her chest along with the familiar flanging speech. It hurt worse than the night prior, the hatred she held for herself somehow magnified by her inability to find the words she so desperately wanted to say. Her anger at least offered her the ability to stand, however, shuffling away under the cover of faded light to the containment area before some nosy marine decided to come looking. She knew that, at the very least, there would be another night to surmount some likeness of courage. If not, none of her emotions would have mattered in the slightest.

It had already been five years since their last communication. He wasn't likely to care if she was ever there anyway.

—

 _Mary,_

 _I decided to give up my old profession and stick to what I am good at, not in the least bit thanks to the galactic wide bureaucratic blackout I find myself surrounded by. I have tired, on a multitude of occasions, to either be transferred near or to Earth, if only to help rebuild the Citadel that, as you are aware, we both traversed and know better than most._

 _I have tried my best and exhausted most resources, but no one will tell me where you are. They will not even acknowledge that you ever existed. If not for the communications that I managed to save, I am not sure I would, what is it you say? "Have much of a leg to stand on"?_

 _I am sorry._

 _I hope that you are happy, wherever that may be._

— _Tertius_

* * *

Tunes to listen to: "The Last Man" by Clint Mansell, (same composer as some of ME3's score): watch?v=mbPPULINtGs


	4. Quite a Sight

[Quite] a Sight

There was something to be said about the way the galaxy's collective consciousness fell back into its old habits. Despite everything they had been through and the overwhelming sense of loss they all felt, societies still broke into their usual selves. The same cultural behaviors remained paramount and the same systems of government remained intact, even if they would have otherwise failed had it not been for some magical red light sweeping through the mass relay system. This, of course, being something anyone had yet to explain, save for whisperings of a "crucible" or some other such word that held little meaning beyond people's imaginations.

Perhaps it was fear that kept people to such habits. Fear had embedded itself so deeply into the souvenirs of their war wounds that the next generation was being born with scars. Familiarity was safety, after all, even if it meant continuing to hide secrets deep enough and dark enough to swallow the light of the stars. Familiarity in isolation, however, was what drove them to war in the first place. It was possible that, in seeing the ancient petroglyphs side by side, the same familiarity had been repeated for much longer than the systems still managing to stay afloat in the void that was space.

Old habits apparently do die hard.

Though Teritus had been assigned to look over the cavern carvings from the confines of the records room, his mind was elsewhere. So many things laid heavily on his shoulders, including the argument with his brother. It had been a day or so since he saw him, hiding away in the dark like the some rodent chewing at its own tail. Regardless of his mastery of linguistics, he knew he was still awful with words – he wanted nothing more than to apologize, but every combination he could think of would always backfire in his head. Being the eldest of the two he should have stepped up and met his much deserved fate with all the social graces he was taught; his family would be shaking their heads in disappointment if they knew.

Perhaps his punishment sent from beyond was his brother's wife working in records as well.

"Don't you think so?"

The wispy, slightly echoed voice from a helmet speaker broke him out of his daze, glancing up from his spot at a backlit drafting table. Keeda was shifting the boxes she had just gone through over from "components of the Hierarchy" to "Coalition confidential", preparing them to be wheeled away to the salarians. He stood after watching her struggling to set the container properly on the ever growing pillars of documents, Keeda exhaling loudly as a heavy thump resonated in the crowded, yet nearly lifeless, room.

"What about?" he asked, tapping his hand anxiously on the corner of the desk.

She leaned with her elbow on the closed box top closest to her. "The Alliance teams. Don't you think they're hiding something over there?"

"The same could be said for us and these findings," he noted, leisurely walking to the pile needing to be moved. "I don't think they'd like the idea of performing operations so close to what that mountain was for."

"What we _suspect_ that mountain was for," she corrected as quietly as she could, though it became muddled in her headset. "And don't go saying that so loudly. That's still in a legally gray area."

A chuckle reverberated in his chest as he grabbed the next heavy box, examining the label. Ever the perfectionist, Keeda's standing in the Hierarchy regarding her citizenship via marriage came from her once banal hobby of learning the laws of various cultures. It came in handy on her pilgrimage, but ultimately became her career after the war when most governments were desperate for anyone who could negotiate state secrets with laws only the dead were familiar with. Along with her husband, she was sent off to sites of a "sensitive nature" and tasked with recording, categorizing, and determining what was and wasn't to be shared. Her job was particularly difficult when the amount of records became towers over her, a backlog of notes and artifacts that could only be painstakingly sorted by her.

He gestured a question of where he should place the box in his own hands after staring at it incomprehensibly for a moment, Keeda shaking her head and pointing to place it back amongst the others. Sighing inwardly, he did what he was asked and began to lean against the most stable stack of containers, watching as she fussed with straightening any labels.

"What makes you think that?" he continued, cracking his left knuckles of their tiredness. "They haven't been doing anything out of the ordinary that I know of."

"You don't think it's odd that they have a whole section of the complex all to themselves and these guests they bring in? Guests that, by the way, we never actually see outside of that area, except for a few of the case workers who won't say two words about what they do to anyone?"

Tertius shook his head, tilting it slightly as he looked back at the heap of papers he himself had left. "You and Caien are like two peas in a pod, I swear."

"Two what in a pod?"

"Peas," he waved a dismissive hand after a time, returning to his post at the drafting table. "It's a human expression. It means you belong together in your similarities, including some of your, mm, different ideas."

He could feel her glare through her translucent helmet, crossing her arms. "You don't think what they're doing is strange?"

"I'm sure they're up to something, but there's nothing that you, or me, or anyone else on this tiny little rock can do, so why worry about it?" He groaned as he sat back down, tapping the side of his face. "By the way, your recorder is still running."

"You're no fun," she huffed as she tapped her wrist to turn off the green light beside her temple, strolling over and standing across from him. Another leftover hobby that grew like a third eye attached to her helmet, she was always video recording the most mundane things, be it work or otherwise. It was both a blessing and a curse at times, but a familiar constant regardless of the circumstances.

"That's why you married the fun brother," he replied, his gaze returning to his work.

Tertius tried to ignore what he knew was coming next, burying his face in wrinkled papers and shuffling through them to break the silence. No matter what busying tactics he tried, he could hear her foot begin to tap louder the more time went on, almost feeling the desk being pushed closer to him. Eventually he blinked slowly, facing the ever dreaded ire of his sister-in-law.

" _Speaking_ of your brother—"

"Here we go…" he said under his breath, pressing his left hand against his forehead.

"—What exactly did you say to him?"

He tilted his head, his words sounding just as stupid as he tried to play himself off as, "What do you mean?"

"What do you mean ' _what do I mean_ '?" she questioned, leaning in closer as she waved her arm towards the tinted windows. "You two haven't spoken in a day!"

"Well, it's been three days, actually," he muttered quietly, his mandibles flicking in thought. "That's when they shifted me down here to records, anyway."

"Wait, what?" She thought for a moment, shaking her head. "It doesn't matter how long! You haven't said a word to each other and my husband has been moping around our room like a wounded pyjak!"

Tertius hesitated, his jaw clenched tightly enough to make it feel like his teeth were chipping. The ache in his right arm was starting to sense the weight in his chest, sitting back to alleviate any pressure he could. The more her glowing eyes stared right through him, though, the more sunken he became.

"Is this about Dr. Chakwas? Because if it is—"

"Wait, you _knew_ about that?" he asked irritably, standing and creating space between them by placing his hands on the back of his chair.

"Of course I knew, I always know about these sorts of things." She crossed her arms, taking on a gentler tone in noticing his rising defensiveness. "Your brother is just concerned about you. We both are. The last time you were like this—"

"I know! I know what I was like, I was there!" he snapped, throwing his hands up defeatedly and beginning to pace. His voice remained low, however, seemingly unable to speak above a rasp. "I'm so tired of hearing how _concerned_ everyone is about my health and safety like I'm some sickly animal that needs to be doted over! I've said time and time again that I am _fine_ , that I'll _be fine_ , but no one will just let it go!"

"And why should we?" she exclaimed, throwing her arms to her side. "Why are we the ones who should give up?"

"Because this isn't something you, or Caien, or that damn doctor can solve." His words faded as he spoke, trying in vain to keep himself from saying too much.

Keeda stared for was felt like hours, her shoulders relaxing as her head tilted in thought. Quietly and with her growing anger dissipating to sadness, she continued, "What is this really about?"

"Nothing," he answered, returning to the desk and shuffling what papers that remained into one pile. "It doesn't matter. I appreciate the thought, but we don't have time for this."

Tertius traversed the room as silence settled in, loudly placing any checked documents into their respective containers. He could feel Keeda's eyes following him, standing still and pulling at her fingers in thought. Eventually he notice her grab a second chair, pulling it next the one he had been seated in.

"Did I ever tell you the story of when I accepted Caien's marriage proposal?"

He stopped as he heard her voice cut through the stale air, sighing as he turned to find her sitting. Shrugging, he threw any unsorted documents back onto the desk, running his thumb along his cheek. A brief thought passed in his mind to ask why she would bring that up at that moment, but he knew it wouldn't have stopped her.

"No," he said, sitting down slowly, "but I get the feeling you're going to tell me anyway."

"Yes, I am," her glowing eyes smiled, crossing her legs and leaning her elbow against the table. "Well, let's see...I suppose it helps to start from the beginning."

Tertius audibly groaned, "We really need to drop these files off soon—"

"The sooner you let me _talk_ the sooner we'll deliver them."

He shook his head, "Fine, fine, from the beginning it is."

"To be honest, I didn't like your brother at first," she began, a surprising pause passing between them as her words sank in. "He was so... _loud_ , outgoing, and a bit too keen on taking dangerous missions. He wasn't exactly someone I wanted around to study important documentation."

"Yeah, that sounds about right," Tertius chuckled, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.

"It wasn't until the blockade began did I understand what he was doing," she said quietly. "When everyone else had wounds no one could see, he was there to try and help any way he could. Although he was failing at it, he was trying to make _me_ feel better about being away from the Flotilla. I sort of...got it after that, if that makes sense. I understood that his affection didn't come from what I was for the Hierarchy, but who he saw me for. And he made me laugh. _Really_ laugh - laughing so hard sometimes that my respirator would wheeze."

They both smiled gently at the thought, staring off at nothing in particular. Reminiscing in their own minds about the many times each had felt that way, the moments that existed in another time and another place were fleeting. Keeda's words began to drip with melancholy, a deeply buried fear showing itself through her twitching fingers.

"It was around the time the krogan started to help. Around the time he found out your family…" She drifted into silence for a moment, reading the hurt starting to make its way into his eyes. "He didn't tell anyone, but I could see it. I knew him well enough. No, not just enough. I knew him well at that point. He would always ask me such silly questions - 'Are you a fan of marriage?', 'So, what do you think of children?', 'Did you want to live on Rannoch someday? I heard the Flotilla is really making strides!' And I would laugh through my visor at how painfully obvious he was and my heart would become so full of joy. Um…"

He blinked out of his engrossed focus, noticing the shakiness had made its way to her throat. "What? Did something happen?"

"He didn't want to tell you," she sighed in almost a cry, "but...He died."

Tertius's blood ran cold, his chair sounding like nails on a chalkboard creaking in the stillness as he sat upright. "I don't understand."

"He had mended so many invisible wounds for others that his own had grown into something unbearable," she answered. "Hearing about your family made him numb to everything. I tried to tell him not to go on that rescue mission with us, that he needed time, but he just said, with that same smile, that he'd be fine. He'd be fine…"

Her words circled around the hole in his chest like a drain, spiraling into the darkened well of his heart. Tertius hadn't realized what he had been saying up until then; perhaps such small words cut much deeper than he would ever really know. The actions of his brother and sister-in-law made more sense to him at that point, even if he didn't really want to hear it. It didn't matter what he wanted to hear, though.

"He ran out with the team to rescue another squad that was pinned down. I know it was better for me to stay behind at the transport, since I wasn't cut out for that kind of combat, but when I saw him come back I just... _wished_ I had been there. I wished, and I wished, but no matter how much I wanted to turn back those few minutes I never could." She held her elbows as she hunched over, unable to conceal the sadness of her voice. It was as if she was still there, seeing every devastatingly minute detail. "He had been shot several times by a horde of Marauders and when the last of the team was finally leaving, a beam had collapsed on his head. He was dying by the time he came back to me and dead for six minutes after that. _Six minutes_. And for those six minutes all I could think about was the things I wanted to say to him. T-to tell him that his stupid jokes were funny, a-and that his happiness brought my heart happiness, and that yes, if he asked me, I would spend the end of my days living on whatever home world was ours. But in those six minutes I knew I never could. I had wasted my days being stubborn and buried in whatever manual I could get my hands on. Watching a loved one die, it just...All you can think about is how you can't say these things to the dead. You can only say them for the dead."

He hesitated from answering, lost in his own mind as he subconsciously pulled at the metal plate in his chest with his right hand. Then, with a cold breath aching in his throat, he said slowly, "Do you think it's the same for the dying? Having a loved one watch you die?"

"I would think so, just...less fear." She paused in thought, beginning to relax. "When he came to, he just...smiled at me. The same way he always smiled at me, and I had no words to say anymore. I took off my helmet and my gloves and I held his face in my hands and...stared. I stared and then I cried harder than I probably ever will again. When we got back to base I was put on repair work to get over the cold I should have seen coming, but he was put right back to it the moment he could stand on two legs. I gave him the only picture of me before he left again, though, and said that he needed to keep that safe and give it back when the war was over. I don't think he understood the obviousness of my statement, but I think it helped in the end somehow…"

"Why didn't he tell me?" he asked aloud when she had finished, barely above a whisper.

"Because he didn't want you to be concerned," she said, her honesty unintentionally clawing into him further. "And that's something else you should know. When Caien came back to me from those six minutes, I don't think he was quite himself. He became forgetful and I don't think he can read people like he used to. He has a hard time recognizing when someone doesn't show any visual emotion. You'll have to forgive him for that, regardless of whatever he might be at fault for saying."

The light of the afternoon sun tilted onto the reflective surface of the desk, golden fragments of dust stinging his eyes. After everything she had said, everything he knew that should have stuck into him like beacons to give him the strength to speak, he remained silent. Those beacons slid out through the holes in his heart and mind and left him with the emptiness of tongue-tied regret. Despite the hollowness of his crippling doubt, he could feel the weight of her every word. She was right, the feeling was the same for the dying - a feeling he couldn't forgive himself for forgetting. Not for a very long time, at least.

"It's not his fault," he said, resting his forehead in his clenched hands. "None of this is."

"It isn't yours either," she replied earnestly. "This isn't about what happened before, is it? This isn't about any of us."

"No," he shook his head quietly, shakily inhaling as he sat up. "I...don't know what to say. I never knew what to say. I just...can't."

"It's okay," she began reassuringly, standing slowly. "You don't have to talk about it now. It took me seven years to talk about this, yeah? This is your six minutes. Take all the time you need."

She placed a hand on his shoulder, Tertius instinctively setting his left hand on top of hers as she continued. "Please speak with Caien, even if it's just about what you two discussed."

"I know. I will," he nodded, slipping his arm away. "I'm...sorry, Keeda. For everything that's happened."

"As am I, brother," he could see her eyes smiling again as she stepped away to finish her work. "Just know that whatever happens, we will always be here for you."

Tertius sat in silence for a time and listened to her carry on, mumbling various information and humming a tune every so often. Her recounting all the things she was eventually able to say to her beloved stirred up memories from the reservoir of years gone by - everything he had made peace with in the letters he could never send. Regardless of what was most likely the inevitable truth, he knew deep down that he wasn't ready to face it yet. He couldn't let go of that tether from his past, to finally fall to the bottom and start the painful rise from the darkest parts of his mind. Trying to do so once before had almost killed him and, even with the support and hope that flourished around him, he wasn't so sure it wouldn't happen again. Though he would never admit it, not even to himself, the idea of his own death scared him. He had faced it many times before, after all.

It scared him more, however, to think of losing her all over again.

That was something he would have to push to the far reaches of his mind. There were more pressing matters to attend to, particularly concerning those who he could see were still living. He pushed himself up out of his chair with steadfast knees, tapping his hand gently on the desk.

"Could you, uh," he murmured, looking over to find she was staring back at him, "could you take these for me with the others? If you have the time? I'm just...I'm going to call it a day."

She nodded lightly, "Sure thing. Have a good evening, okay?"

"You too," he attempted to smile, unable to dissuade his own pessimism even for a moment. Though her helmet provided a shield from her emotions, he knew that the containers she continued to sort were the pieces of her soul that had shattered on the floor, leaving her to repair what had once almost been unmendable.

Walking out into the afternoon sun from the shadows of the empty halls was like being put into a fire. His skin ached from the transition of temperatures and longed for the shade of nightfall, squinting against the glittering ocean tides and examining his surroundings as he traveled thoughtfully close to the building. It seemed as if second shift was beginning to congregate at various points of interest, particularly at the patio split between the different wings of the facility. He considered that he might perhaps find his brother there, carrying on in his usual chipper way, but he had trouble spotting much of anything in the sea of bodies and noise. The crowd of people he was forced to pass through seemed to cause a ringing in his head, dulling the sounds around him as if he were submerged. It didn't take long before he felt the need to escape, hearing the heaviness of his breathing as he rounded the corner towards his room.

He stopped, though, as the blinding light fell from his eyes and he hesitated to catch his breath. The world remained a vacuum of a heartbeat and the air in his lungs, noticing two people that stood out from the others. A familiar, older human man in signature yellow armor crossed his arms to the far edge of the gathering space, leaning against the wall within the built-in walkway beneath the turian quarters. Next to him facing away was one of those white robed caretakers and, even though he couldn't see her, Tertius was almost certain she was the woman from before. There was something odd about her he couldn't quite place, a scent that fell upon the wind that was somehow familiar. The light of the sun behind him casted a long shadow that grew closer to her own, feeling that no matter how hard he was being pulled in, the pressure against his chest pushed him into the ground like hands begging him not to go.

"What's he doing here?"

Tertius caught his breath, the noise of the world returning to his senses almost instantly. He looked to his side to find his brother standing beside him, staring at the same sight he had been. When he glanced back, the woman in white was no longer there, the man in the yellow armor carrying on with another Alliance marine. Tertius let the image go after brief bewilderment, clearing his throat.

"Oh, uh, that's…" He squinted, racking his brain of where he had seen the man before. It was on the tip of his tongue, but someone he couldn't quite place.

"Massani," Caien huffed lowly, turning towards his brother. "He and a bunch of other mercs helped the coalition out after the Twelfth Labour strike that left you out of commission for a bit. I'm surprised the Alliance decided to hire him again after what he pulled."

"Wait, what? I remember him vaguely from my C-Sec days but don't think I heard about that," he replied, falling into old habits.

"Yeah, I don't know the specifics," he said slowly, scratching the side of his face. "But it had something to do with illegally hijacking a bunch of communication relays. His group said it was the most efficient way, the government said there were treaties against it for a reason, obscenities were exchanged with high ranking officials, so on and so on."

"Hm, yeah, sounds familiar," he mused with a chuckle, the reality of his brother grinning with him quickly setting in. "Hey, can I talk to you for a minute?"

Caien shrugged, "Aren't we talking already?"

"No, I mean—" Tertius stopped, holding his breath in along with his patience. "Can we go talk over by the stairs? You know, where I can actually hear you talk?"

"Oh, right," Caien laughed weakly, seeming just as tired mentally as Tertius felt.

They strolled over through the dwindling crowds, turning into the stairwell corridor. Tertius found it hard not to find a seat on the darkened steps, lowering himself down with his right arm pressed against the wall. It seemed to help the growing pain unapologetically finding its way suddenly and inconveniently into his already aching body. Caien appeared as patient as ever with him, leaning with his left shoulder against the wall.

"Caien, about what I said..." He paused, forcing himself to look up from his laced fingers. "I'm sorry. You didn't deserve that. I was wrong for ever thinking you did."

"Look, it's nothing—" he began quietly, stopping himself when he recognized his brother wanted to say something more.

"It's not nothing," Tertius shook his head, following with his eyes as Caien walked up beside him. "You of all people know this isn't nothing, and I know you meant well. You always do."

"Well, I don't know about that," he grumbled, setting his tired body down on the stair beside him. "I remember being a little shit back in the day. Running circles around the house, breaking stuff, blaming it on you to mother—"

"And mother seeing right through you—"

"And getting my ass beat, yeah. Fun times," he sighed, leaning back on the step behind them. Caien paused for a moment, hearing the voices from the outside start to fade. "When did we get so old?"

"Probably about the time the youngest of us got married," he jested, his brother echoing a flanged hum of amusement.

"Fair enough," he answered, patting Tertius on the shoulder. His smile dimmed after a time, the thoughts behind his eyes finally grasping the seriousness of the moment. "I've got to hand it to you, you've aged a lot better than most. A lot better than I would have, given the circumstances."

"You can say it," Tertius spoke quietly. "Say what you're thinking."

Caien paused, unsure how to articulate what had been on his mind for what felt like years. Perhaps it had been years, and he had just lost track of it all; maybe his brother's doubt had been sowed much deeper than he anticipated. There was a long list of things he needed to say, but knew there were only a few sentences he should speak, continuing as he stood.

"I get it. I do, and I'm not just saying that to be nice or sympathetic or any of that. I don't know what I would've done if Keeda hadn't been there, but I wouldn't have been as composed and…well, strong as you've been," he shrugged, his jaw clenching to choose his words carefully. "You'll find her. Just…know that someday, somewhere, you'll see her standing in some doorway and it'll be like nothing happened. You just aged a bit."

Tertius closed his eyes in silent contemplation, pulling at the fingers of his right glove. It was hard for him to stand again with the striking ache in his bones, but for the first time in a long time it appeared like he could breathe. The drowning feeling that was overwhelming him drained from his chest, the warm air of the day finally finding its way into his lungs. He nodded shortly as he stepped up towards his apartment, his brother smiling peacefully.

"Thanks, Caien," he spoke softly. "I mean that."

"I know you do," he replied, waving a hand in acknowledgement. "Go get some sleep, you've got dig site duty again tomorrow."

"Yeah," he chuckled, finding it time to make his way up. "Go find your wife. She could use some company that's more fun to be around."

The day dwindled as it always would, Tertius making a light meal that would hold his medicine down better and finding comfort on the couch with an old movie. Despite his best efforts to set aside all he had seen that day, he found himself unable to focus on the vid he had seen so many times before, the words of his brother and sister-in-law sinking with him into the cushions. After a time he found himself sitting up and rubbing the back of his neck in thought, the orange, dying light becoming replaced with the stark blue of the world's bioluminescence in his vision. With weighted legs he made his way through the angular hall into his bedroom, oddly surprised to find he had been leaving it in such a state.

With his paperwork laying disorganized across his desk and his laundry left piling up in the corner, he made best to tidy his room and straighten what he could. The book he had been reading for a few night sat on the floor from where it had rolled out of his hands, Tertius inspecting it before placing it on the side table. His mandibles flicked a smile seeing it next to the old metal pendant he still had sitting beside him; he couldn't help but wondering what its previous owner would say to him after so much time.

As he shuffled through separating the different sketches and notes he had been studying, he noticed the small pieces of torn paper buried underneath. He had been foolish to let his emotions get the best of him, resigning himself to wonder what he had written before accurately. Switching on a lamp light, he cleared away what remained and gently pieced together what he had wanted to say, fondly remembering the text as he reached for another sheet of paper.

He stopped himself, the air from the open window drifting to his nose. There was a moment when he couldn't see clearly, his eyes watering from a stench he was growing far too familiar with. The fragile contentment he had finally found was short-lived, replaced by a quiet, building anger. He had told whoever had been smoking near his room to leave over five nights from his window and, as he stood with his hands slamming on the desk, he quickly decided to tell them in person.

Pacing his way down the steps with growing ire, the scent started to fade, Tertius subconscious noticing something else intermingling with it. As he rounded the corner with his hand on the wall, he opened his mouth to speak a few choice words, only to have them fall away from his open mouth. There stood the woman in white, standing beneath the built-in walkway with her hood drawn over her eyes. Half the scent was clearly coming from the cigarette between her teeth, the other from the woman herself; it only took him a moment to realize why it seemed so familiar.

"You're going to have to take it up with the Alliance," she sighed audibly, removing the burning stick by placing it between two fingers. "They won't let me smoke near the patient facilities and it's not my fault there's a cross breeze from the cove."

He stared for what felt like an eternity, unsure what to say except the last thing he thought he would ever breathe again.

"Mary?"

—

 _Mary,_

 _The Hierarchy has agreed to meet with me to see about this…issue with my previous wounds. Clearly the war effort did not drain them completely of funds if they are interested in this sort of research still. I have a feeling they are receiving some help from the Alliance. Most governments probably are in one way or another._

 _Passing through these colorful patches of space reminded me of you. I remember how much you said you hated space when you arrived at the Citadel, how you couldn't even stand to look at it. That fear seemed to leave the older you became. I even remember you briefly mentioning how you would like to traverse them yourself one day, if only to see where we had lived on Rannoch._

 _I wish to keep my word and go with you someday. Until then, I hope you are happy, wherever you may be._

— _Tertius_

* * *

A/N Sooo…I know I keep apologizing for the sparse updates, but long story short, I fell down a flight of stairs and suffered a concussion. Like the 'hit your head so hard you pass out and end up unable to stare at a computer for weeks' kind of concussion. So yeah, I'm okay now, but I'm sorry if there's any errors or minor details that are off in this one. I'll be back on track here soon.

Also, yes, the title scheme is "Mary, Mary" this time - you caught on to me and so soon! Still, this time around the meaning is, uh...a little darker, as it'll become apparent in later chapters.

In the meantime, tunes to listen to, (Max Richter - When She Came Back): watch?v=4TNt3Yu0AJ4


	5. Contrary to Popular Belief

[Contrary] to Popular Belief

The inescapable sound of the glowing tide rolling over the sandy beach made the pain in her chest wash over the rest of her body. Though deep in her mind she had been preparing for that moment and, ultimately, what she would say, all of it left her with a sharp, warm breeze. Her eyes remained transfixed to the floor for a time, her neck stiff and unable to face the voice that had called out her name. As the gaze of her uncovered eye lifted with the hood of her outwear, she caught her breath to find it hadn't been another flitting voice like a ghost in her consciousness. Seeing him standing there in some child-like stupor forced her furrowed brow to soften, all the anger she held in her bones draining to the cigarette being crushed to a pinpoint.

"Mary, it's…I'm—" he began, the shock apparent in his voice.

"I still remember you," she said quietly, lifting away her hood with her free hand. She pulled at the scarf around her face instinctually, trying to fix her appearance to something resembling normal before looking at him again. "Hi, Tertius."

He let go of the breath in his throat with a nearly overwhelming sense of relief, standing straighter as his hand slipped from its place on the wall. "Hello, Mary."

"Long time no see," her kindling ire made its way back to the tip of her tongue, biting her cigarette between her teeth as she grinned. "Literally and figuratively, I guess."

Tertius didn't appear to notice the subtle sarcasm, his mind running over the thousands of things he wanted to say all at once. A long pause drifted between them, Mary's expression lowering once again to a distant, almost unrecognizable melancholy. Clenching his teeth, his mandibles close to the sides of his face, he tried to break from his shock with a forced cough, his left hand extended in a gesture of good will.

"You, uh…you look well," he stated, internally screaming at himself for having _that_ be the first bit of conversation they had in nearly five years.

She hesitated to answer, a darkness forming behind her eyes. "If you say so."

"So, how…how have you been?" he placed his hands on his hips, trying to maintain his composure. "How did the treatments go?"

"How do you think they went?" she snapped, motioning to the right side of her face. "I'm not covering half my face for looks."

Tertius blinked, eventually beginning to notice her growing anger. "Ah, I…I see."

"Better than I do," she flicked the ashes from her fingers.

His shoulders became taut with panic, going over anything he might have said. Though his heart pleaded for him to make it right, whatever it was, his mind decided to force whatever else it could from his mouth.

"So you're with the Alliance then?" he asked, attempting to clear the air. "Have they been taking care of you?"

" _Taking care of_ ," she repeated with a half-hearted chuckle. "That's one way of putting it."

The joy of the encounter fell to the wayside as his eyes narrowed in question. "I don't understand."

"You don't need to understand," she shrugged, her vindictiveness being pushed down momentarily to see his eyes suddenly looking pained. Her emotions didn't settle for long, though. "It doesn't matter."

"I'd still like to know," he answered gently, his tone deeper with concern.

Her voice swelled with the fiery rage in her heart, "Well, _maybe_ if you had stayed in touch you would know."

"Wait, what—"

"Would you two quit your bitching already? Some of us are trying to sleep!" a heavily accented voice called out from the distant pavilion at the shoreline.

Tertius turned himself slightly to see where the familiar voice yelled from out of the darkness, finding Zaeed Massani had changed out of his armor for more casual apparel. Though he was leaning back almost horizontal in a portable folding chair, his legs outstretched in front of him, he held his arms up in displeasure. The man craned his neck to glare at them, even if his efforts were barely placing them in his peripheral vision. Tertius glanced back when he heard Mary audibly sigh in frustration.

"Mind your own business, Massani, nobody asked you!" she shouted, her scarf shifting slightly out of place.

"Make me, Bell!" he retorted, his hands falling onto the armrests.

"I would," she chuckled teasingly, "but pushing the elderly around is frowned upon in most cultures!"

" _Elderly?!_ "

A wave of confusion rolled through his mind like the thunder in the distant horizon, watching Zaeed becoming incredibly irate as Mary continued to smirk. The moment obscenities loudly lifted into the night air, so, too, did the older man attempt to stand, only to become caught in the space between the folding armatures. The more he struggled, the more he could hear Mary quietly giggle. Tertius turned towards her with an awkward smile, pointing his thumb at him.

"He's a real stand-up guy," he deadpanned.

Watching Mary finally expose her teeth in a smile, her eyes crinkling at their sides genuinely, allowed Tertius time to relax. He tried to exchange his excitement of the moment for a calmer demeanor, being more careful with his words. The last thing he wanted was to leave her upset with some poorly thought out remark.

It would have helped to realize that nothing spoke louder than saying nothing at all.

"I missed you," Mary breathed faintly, the words feeling like an echo she couldn't keep from saying. She looked away when she realized her anger was slipping, her face becoming redder from its once gray-white hue.

Tertius sighed inwardly, wondering if she had meant for him to hear that. Something from the past stirred within him, though, his chest tightening in remembrance of that last thing she ever physically said. Slowly and with the greatest amount of sincerity his tired self could muster, he reflected on the same words he had spoken to her so long ago.

"I…I'm sorry I never made it to Earth." He paused, running the back of his right hand along the scratched, orange tattoos on his cheek. Perhaps, he figured, it was better to pretend he hadn't heard her after all, just in case those words weren't meant for him. "I hope you liked the presents anyway."

She froze, the ashes of her cigarette becoming dangerously close to her glove. The way he spoke made her eyes sting, bouncing sweetly like warm raindrops on cold cement. The fabric around her face had always been there – at least, ever since the last trip to her grandmother's many years ago. Despite attempting to keep it in pristine condition, it felt like almost a lifetime ago; perhaps, in some sense, it had been. Before long she batted her eyelashes in irritation, flicking the final burning embers into the sand beside her. Mary adjusted the scarf around the right side of her mouth before crossing her arms, shifting her weight to her left foot.

"Well, I mean, I'm wearing _this_ particular scarf for looks," she grinned, shrugging. "Thanks, though. They were great gifts. Grandma wondered what the whole 'Blasto' thing was about, which was…fun to explain."

" _Oh_. Yeah, I'd, uh…imagine so," he chuckled, several years of embarrassment finding its way back to him. "Sorry about that."

"Don't worry about it. She got a kick out of it," she shook her head, glancing over his uniform. "So, I see you're with the military still. Doesn't really seem like a place for the rescue fleet."

"No, not exactly," he replied. "I transferred to the linguistics division a while ago. I'm a translator now."

She beamed, "A translator? No kidding, when did you decide to pick that up?"

"Let's see…" He hesitated, subconsciously rolling his left wrist in his right hand. "A few years ago? The Hierarchy decided to put more effort into reconnaissance than rescues."

Mary stared intently in the dim light, watching the subtle twitches of his face and body movements. If it was one thing she remembered clear as day, it was the way he handled certain questions. She wasn't about to pry into things he didn't want to say, though – things between them weren't the same anymore.

"I see you became what you wanted."

Her eyes widened slightly, unsure if she had imagined hearing him, "What?"

"A teacher," he explained, oblivious to her surprise. "That's why you're here, right? You're helping with the patients the Alliance has, and I assume it'd be something along those lines."

"Oh," she let out a short breath. "Yeah, it's something like that. It's part of a sort of rehabilitation program."

"Rehabilitation?" he asked curiously, feeling more comfortable to step closer, if only to no longer speak so loudly. "Is that what they're there for?"

"Yeah, you know, the fresh tropical air, the sunshine, all that jazz," she stated, her eyes diverted to dusting off her hands. "It's supposed to help their condition alongside their medical treatment."

"Huh. So that's what it's about," he muttered to himself, beginning to talk with his hands. "Nobody's really told us much. My brother's even been coming up with these wild stories to make up for it."

"Oh, your brother's here too—"

Tertius pulled his arms back towards himself as Mary skirted away from him suddenly, holding her hands tightly to her chest with her exposed eye wide. His fingers bobbed subtly in a gesture of surrender, sliding his feet farther from her. There was a sharp and unwavering fear planted deep in her expression, Tertius unsure what to make of it.

"Are you alright?" he inquired softly. "I didn't mean to startle you."

"No, I'm...I'm fine," she laughed loosely, quickly straightening her attire. "It's just...Look, I can't go into it much, but some of the patients' treatments leave behind latent radiation. I don't want it to get to you."

He tilted his head, "Doesn't that affect you?"

"I take certain medications to combat it in small doses, but you never know." She paused, knowing her facade was starting to break. Lifting her hood back over her face, Mary gathered whatever strength she could bear to smile again. "I've got to get going, there's a lot of work to get done tomorrow. It was nice chatting with you, though."

"Yeah," his left mandible flicked in bewilderment, his voice perking up as she began to walk away. "Talk again soon?"

She hesitated as she stepped up onto the patio's landing, looking over her shoulder with a brief nod before her feet spirited her away again. Tertius found himself in stunned silence, alone with his thoughts and left to process what had just happened. He glanced over to Zaeed one last time to see he had kept his left ear towards them, placing a wide brimmed hat back over his eyes as Tertius rounded the corner into the lower level hall.

Though the darkened area near the stairwell gave way to nearly blinding artificial lights, he didn't notice them beginning to flicker from the storm moving in. Electrical storms seemed to be timed like clockwork on certain days, knocking out certain areas of power and the localized communication systems when they were at their worst. It would figure that they would show themselves at that moment, but he was thankful the green hue above his brother's apartment remained constant.

He wasn't sure if he should disturb them at first – it was grossly late and they all had the morning shift to attend to. The second his feet stepped at the threshold of the doorway, however, he found himself planted into the thin carpeting. There was nothing else he could do but knock softly, hoping it was enough to only wake just one of them. Tertius could hear rustling after a time, his tapping hand finding its way to the door frame as he propped himself up; the weight of the night was catching up with him and quickly. After a few clicks and the hissing of a decompression system, the metal door finally slid open, his brother's face only appearing marginally disgruntled.

"Do you know what time it is?" Caien mumbled, rubbing the back of his neck.

"I know, it's late," he replied, pressing his left hand against his forehead. "Just...am I awake right now?"

Caien groan, "Seriously? You know how long it's going to take me to get decontaminated again? I might as well just skip going back to bed."

"Why would you do that?"

Both brothers looked around to a segment of the apartment sealed away behind glass, the voice they heard muffled by the intercom system. Keeda's light eyes smiled as she tapped on the transparent surface, dressed in a floor length robe with her dark hair pulled back in a messy, lowly tied bun. It was one of the few times anyone would see her outside her suit, and the only reason their home remained with power when everything else failed. The backup generator they bought on Palaven was one of the better investment choices Caien made over the years.

"Sorry, Keeda, I didn't mean to wake you both," Tertius continued, closing his eyes momentarily to think.

"Well, we weren't really—" Caien smirked, stopping himself as his wife smacked the glass with the back of her hand. He grinned sheepishly seeing a look that could have killed him if she had been any closer. "But we're up now anyway."

"What's troubling you, Tertius?" Keeda asked, her voice as tender as it was earlier that day.

"I am awake, right?" he responded, almost as if he were asking himself.

"Yeah, we're all awake," Caien answered slowly, his eyes narrowing with question. "Why?"

"It's Mary…" he drifted, looking up at him. "I saw her."

"In another dream or a communication relay, perhaps?" she asked excitedly, holding her garment closer to her.

"No," he answered. "I just had a conversation with her outside. She's working with the Alliance patients."

A stark, unsettling pause fell into the air, rumbles of thunder echoing off the hollow halls around them. Keeda's fingers almost instinctively pressed against her lips with both question and concern, Caien's tired eyes squinting as they found a new spot on the floor. Tertius waited for them to say something, anything to break from the terrible sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

" _Wait_..." Caien continued gradually, spacing his words to make room for the realization to sink in. "Run that by us one more time."

Elsewhere in a space that felt like worlds away, Mary had arrived at the Alliance facilities before the sky finally relented. She managed to slip by the passing acknowledgement from the marines set out to keep an eye on things in the dead of night, noticing the redhead at the greeting desk preoccupied the time of those without their mandatory helmets. Even the screaming of the inner halls had diminished with the storm, drowning out their fears for much needed sleep. The only one she couldn't seem to fool was Anna, managing to find her just as she stepped through the threshold of the secondary security gates. She was at least polite enough to whisper as Mary picked up the pace, following her closely on her heels.

Entering the cramped, gray room oddly gave her a sense of relief, releasing a shakily hidden sigh and finding a spot under the frosted window. Anna sat beside her on the end of her own bed, noticing her distress and remaining quiet despite her worry. Rolling her knees up into her chest and wrapping her arms around them tightly, Mary hung her head low, noticing the eerie silence of the raindrop's shadows cascading over the room. Regardless of her need for sleep, she would have rather been back where she could have at least heard something other than just the heartbeat in her head.

"You finally talked to him," Anna kindly spoke, although it came across matter-of-factly.

"Yeah," Mary lifted her head in an uncooperative sneer. "How could you tell?"

"Don't give me that," she huffed in return. "How did it go? Are you okay? Do I need to sick Vega on him?"

"Ugh, Anna, _no_ ," her sarcasm formed into a laugh, running her gloved fingers over her eyebrows. "I'm not entirely sure how you would do that."

"Oh, I have my ways," she joked, tapping her temple with her index finger. "I was an intelligence officer, you know."

"Yeah, yeah," she waved dismissively. "Besides, there's nothing really to talk about. We just said hi and called it good."

"What? That can't be it," Anna asserted, following Mary with her eyes as she stood and went to her nightstand. "That man is your best friend, and you're really going to tell me—"

"Was," Mary corrected quietly, pulling the scarf away from her face. "He was my best friend."

Anna paused for a moment, offering a perplexed shrug. "You don't mean that."

Mary glanced over at her with a deadened expression, shaking her head. Sitting down on the edge of her bed, she began sorting through her drawers, looking for the analogue alarm clock she needed for her next shift. Even if someone would come by to make sure she was still alive, she didn't want to rely on anyone else. Not in that environment, anyway.

"He didn't contact me in nearly five years," she replied. "I'm not holding my breath that he even really remembers me beyond that stupid kid that got a hole blown through his chest."

"Well, you were both stupid kids that did stupid things," Anna retorted, scooting up to lay on her back. "Maybe something happened to him. Did you ask—"

"Can we _please_ not talk about this right now?" Mary pleaded, holding her hands up defensively. As she reached back to open the last, largest drawer, she hesitated, resting her head against her arm. "There's a lot left to do still."

"Fine, suit yourself," she sighed, lacing her fingers over her stomach. "But talk to him sometime, okay? He still owes you some kind of explanation."

"Don't worry," she answered quietly, folding her embroidered scarf neatly over the large, grumpy-looking sheep plush resting in the chest beside her, "I will."

—

 _Mary,_

 _I do not know what I expected to find here, but it certainly has not come of anything. Palaven is the same useless, bureaucratic mess I always remembered it being, with an added layer burying its newer, uglier secrets with it. No one here knows what is going on - they still believe the Twelfth Labour and everything that came after were the product of some organized pirate group seeking to seize control where Cerberus and those like them left a giant void. Even with everything that has happened, and the proof we all have that it is always been something more, no one will accept even the slightest bit of responsibility._

 _I do not even care anymore if they do. I am only here to get them to admit you existed, because you did exist, and you mattered to someone._

 _You still matter to someone._

 _I hope you are happy, wherever you are._

 _—Tertius_

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Tunes to listen to, (Olafur Arnalds - Happiness Does Not Wait): watch?v=0BdfH0CAKK4


	6. Of Anger and How Little a Thing

Of Anger and [How] Little a Thing

It had always been the same, finding himself gazing through an orange omni-tool screen at a pair of bright green eyes staring through him. The world around them was unchangeable, the situation running on repeat with an even greater subconscious dread looming just under the surface of it all. Houses on red dirt would give way to dried fields and a mountainous silhouette in the distance, his right hand held tightly by a tiny asari child.

Even in his dreaming state, however, he was beginning to notice something was off. It was subtle at first - rocks being replaced by granular cement, the day fading into artificial light from previously nonexistent lamp posts, civilian structures turning into military facilities piece by piece - all of which was ignored by the fear of what was to come. He would only realize that things were beginning to change after a few days, when the small, quiet village turned into a walled-off compound that he didn't recognize. The route and, ultimately, his fate remained unchanged, though.

The nightmarish anxiety would always start with the blue flower the little girl scraped from the dirt. It became brighter with each passing dream, glowing from its veins and appearing to move on its own after a time. In fact, he could have sworn it was breathing, carrying a life of its own however subtly. Every instance he spoke, it seemed to inhale, illuminating as a teal color before dimming. A coldness settled in his chest and its light faded to nothing, the asari girl looking it over before burying it beneath a pile of twigs and rubble.

What would happen next was always a blur, never being something important despite dwelling on it in his every waking moment. There was always flames and bullets, bodies of the old and the young littering the ground. He could remember the awful stench of stale air spreading from the bunker as people flooded in, grabbing his brother's hand to be helped up into it. The ramp into the entrance had been moved for another purpose, black grime of oil and slimy, infected water seeping out of every edge as the metal creaked from the onslaught of newly felt weight. Though civilians were still trying to make it, the encroachment of combatants made it difficult to keep the doors open, shutting one as a shield in preparation to seal their last line of defense. Before they received the order, he could see the little girl running faster than she probably ever had before, panic riddled in her features. Her fear resonated within him, stepping down with one foot and stretching his right arm past the barrier.

He could reach her. He knew from the beaming smile on her face that he could _reach her_ , and for a moment he had. For that one fleeting moment he had grasped her tiny hand in his, holding it tight enough that his fingers paled, beginning to pull her into safety. In that moment he believed that conflict would pass, as all the others did, and life would go on as it always had, staring into an omni-tool with a pair of eyes behind it.

But then, in that moment, life wasn't the same anymore.

If he was offered one sliver of solace in the time that slowed around them, it was that he knew she felt nothing in the split second that followed. Her sweet smile had remained even after he watched the light in her eyes vanish, her skin splintering at first and peeling away in flaky, blackened pieces to reveal teeth and bone. Eventually that, too, began to crack in charred segments, the soft tissue of her eyes boiling before they ruptured and cascaded down her cheek like tears. The bright white light of the violent explosion that enveloped them seared the image into his memory, numb to the pain that struck him just as quickly.

It had always been the same, but in that instant, darkness suddenly closed in around his eyes, almost like hands that tried to shield him from his nightmare. He could feel himself being pulled backwards, dizzily falling sharply before landing on something soft. Awash with the lingering heat in his chest, he gasped for air, his eyes opening to his ceiling spinning above him. Eventually it slowed to a halt as he gained his bearings, his talons digging into the sheets and the painful stiffness in his joints relaxing after a time. Sitting up in the dark blue hue of the night, he shakily pressed the palms of his hands against his eyelids, the odd feeling of someone else's touch still lingering on his face.

That had been the last of his dreams over the period of several days since he had spoken with Mary, returning to his old habits of holding back the ache in his upper right arm with medication and the willpower that was beginning to wane. He hadn't seen her since then, though he hadn't gone much farther than peering around the corner towards the Alliance facilities; he didn't want to barge in where he might not be welcomed. Though he wondered at times why the monster of his sleep had changed its form, it never once crossed his mind that it could have been from seeing her again. In fact, his tired, frustrated mind would calm itself in knowing that she was at least alive, almost like a sedative to his anger. It was enough that he could rest easy even while awake, continuing to read the novel Chakwas had given him and rousing to find his way up the mountain on time.

Although, he didn't exactly _like_ where he was going that day.

"You ready to get moving?" Caien asked, nudging his brother in the side.

"Ready as I'll ever be, I guess," he replied, staring out at the gigantic void in front of him. Truth be told, he was never ready to enter the completely vertical drop into the heart of the cave system and, if it hadn't been for his brother's coaxing, he probably would have made himself scarce. "I just want to note that this was never my idea and I hate it."

"Duly noted," he nodded. "Come on, teams have been going down there for months now. You don't want them to show you up, do you?"

"They can have…whatever it is that comes from going down there," Tertius said, his feet somehow managing to press harder into the ground. "Besides, there's plenty still left up here to examine."

"Yeah, but they don't have that cool glowy effect!" he jested, patting him on the back towards the elevator that would take them down. The metal mesh frame and waist-high enclosure didn't seem to put Tertius's mind at ease. "Hey, just remember, if anything jumps out of all that scary darkness at least one of us can shoot at it."

Tertius diverted his eyes from the rain-soaked entrance in the distance, his gaze narrow in annoyance. "I can still shoot a gun, Caien."

"Yeah, but I can shoot it _better_ ," he grinned, steadying himself as the lift jostled slightly and began its descent.

"You're joking," he retorted, his attention fixed on how preposterous it sounded. "I was _completely_ a better marksman that you. Probably still am!"

"You were better at long-range, remember? Your short game has always been terrible," he laughed, his voice bouncing off walls and support scaffolding they couldn't see. "Unless you're trying to puff up your resume for other reasons."

"What's that supposed to mean?" he grumbled, crossing his arms.

"Nothing, just trying to make conversation," he shrugged, his mandibles still lifted in a smile. "So, how's Mary? You didn't say much about her—"

"Don't."

"Don't what?"

"You know what," he said sternly, placing his hand back on the railing subconsciously. "There isn't much to talk about that hasn't already been said. I haven't seen her since then."

"Why not?"

" _Why_ —" he stammered, unprepared for the question. "We've both been busy! She has patients to attend to and there's an entire backlog of garbage data to sift through."

"Ah, yeah, Keeda was telling me about that. Weird that whole chunks of data went missing, and only from certain scientists," he mused, shifting his weight. Tertius wasn't sure how his brother managed to stay so balanced on such uneven ground. "But, I mean, you're visiting Chakwas again later, right? Couldn't you just, I don't know, _ask_ while you're over there?"

"I suppose," he muttered in thought, glancing up at him quickly. "Just to see how she's doing. This place isn't exactly easy to get used to."

"Sure, that's reasonable," he agreed, fighting back the chuckle in his chest. As the brakes began to screech against the metal sides, he couldn't help but say what was on his mind. "Might want to brush up on your tunes, though, Songbird."

Caien's mandibles flared in a grin to the point where his face hurt, witnessing his brother look at him in the same way his wife did; if they weren't family, Tertius probably would have pushed him over the railing. It wasn't a secret that he liked to hum to himself on occasion, picking up tunes from the old human movies he oddly liked to watch. Caien hadn't been entirely sure where he had picked up his taste in vids, but, after noticing that Tertius was a bit livelier over the past week, he had a hunch.

"Really?" Tertius seethed through his teeth. "You're really going to start that again?"

"I mean, it never really went away," he corrected playfully. "It just sort of...paused between the song changes."

" _Spirits_ ," he groaned, the plates on his face pinching in frustration. "Just trying to make conversation, huh?"

There was a sudden jostle as the lift came to a stop, Tertius surprised to find the other teams preparing for their excursion into the inner caves. Caien flicked open the gate's lock with flair, stepping out as he turned on his heels. The light on his armor glistened off the dark, glassy walls, the light blue flowers underneath twitching with a dim glow.

"Well, sure," he replied, his arms outstretched, "but at least it distracted you from the trip down."

He hated that his brother was so good at putting people at ease sometimes. It wasn't that he didn't appreciate it - his silence as he shakily stood on solid ground reflected that - it was his less than tactful choice of topics that dissuaded him from speaking more than single word sentences for the next several hours. Even if Caien could irritate him greater than anything else in his life, he always valued his constant company despite his anger. In the end, Tertius knew his brother could sense his fear of what might have lurked in the dark, and remained a constant light behind him as he and the other researchers began their work.

—

The silence was almost maddening. Staring wide-eyed at the silhouette of raindrops behind sound-proof, frosted glass seemed to be all she could stand doing, but the dull ache of isolation was causing her mind to retreat. The shutters to her soul were latched tightly behind her one, good eye, the light of her existence wary of what lay beyond. She had helped many of the patients get settled, reassuring them that they were safe and that they call their loved ones soon. She relayed what command told her, and what the Alliance told them, and at the end of those lines was unkind silence - either she let it devour those with hope left or, as she had been forced to decide many years ago, she let it rot along with her.

"Are you ready to go?"

The voice from behind her spoke softly like a dim glow from out of the darkness, knowing that anything louder might have stopped her heart momentarily again. Mary didn't even flinch, but the subtle blink told the woman on the bed that she was finally out of her dazed state. The shadowy trails of water remained on her face as she turned it slightly, cascading down the dry, flaky skin on her cheeks.

"Look, what happened to Essa and Bertie is a terrible shame," she continued when Mary remained quiet. "It was going to happen eventually."

Mary turned slowly, picking at the gel beginning to harden along the scars on her face. "We never should have left Earth, Anna. The treatment here is appalling."

"Don't be so cold about it," she stated, shaking her head. "The treatment here is the same, it's just that—"

"Then we shouldn't have come here," Mary seethed, pointing an accusatory finger that eventually fell to the wayside. "They should have died at home. Died around people that actually cared and loved them."

A discomforting air filled the space, Mary retreating to the bathroom to fix the coating on her face. She scraped her heels against the rough carpet as she went, smelling a trail of burning dust against her numbing skin. The sterile air of the tiled room made her left eye sting after entering, almost glad she could feel the cold of the sink as her exposed hands clutched its edges. The figure beside her leaned against the doorframe, holding her elbows with concern.

"You know that never would have happened," Anna replied gently. "Their loved ones already thought they were dead."

Mary inhaled deeply, closing her eyes as she ran her thumb and index finger over the patch of her right eye. "I know."

"But hey, at least you were there for them," she tried to reassure, leaning in with her face next to the mirror hiding the extra bandages. "You got them here and you made sure they were at peace before they fell asleep. And really, not knowing you'll slip into a coma and never wake up is the best way to go in the end. Something you can write home about, anyway."

With one eye peeling open slowly, Mary gazed unamused at her companion. "I don't think grandma wants to know that I'm basically helping people 'be at peace' before watching them die."

"Well, you could always leave that last part out," she mused, pursing her lips. "I'm sure she's just happy to hear from you at all."

"The _only_ reason she hears from me at all is because of the farm," Mary retorted, throwing her hair up into her usual ponytail. She smirked after a moment in thought. "That and she was about ready to burn Atlanta headquarters to the ground unless they kept her updated with everything that was happening."

"Yeah, what was her nickname again? General—"

"General Sherman," she chuckled alongside Anna, pulling the cabinet door to grab a new roll of gauze. "Her one woman March to the Sea, she used to say. I don't think she'd actually go about it anymore since they started that program on the back porch."

"Not with all those families involved, nah," she agreed, watching Mary place the finishing touches on her facial coverings before following her out to the living space.

"But I still think the Alliance wouldn't mess with her," Mary continued, grabbing her gloves and embroidered scarf off her nightstand. "They even made sure she kept getting the mail on time."

"Hm," Anna mumbled, sitting down slowly on the edge of her bed. "You think they gave her all the mail?"

"What? Of course they did," she answered, making sure her gloves and shoes were tightly on before standing straight.

"I mean, they filter everyone else's mail," she shrugged, pondering with a tilted head. "There might be something she missed."

"What? A bunch of spam adverts and another politician asking for 'rebuilding' money? There's not much to miss," she scoffed, smoothing her dress of any wrinkles before heading to the door. "If I'm not back in a few hours, be sure to come find me."

"And if you're still treating Sandra?"

Mary paused in the doorway, subconsciously pressing her fingers against her sides. "Then you'll know."

Walking into the hall was always like walking into another world. The quietness of her room would give way to muffled conversations and the sounds of medical equipment whirring in the distance. She was growing accustomed to the emptiness as the excitement of a new place and new people died down within the gray and green corridors, running her gloved hands along the dark blue pinstripe that extended around each corner. Through each checkpoint laid a cordial but standoffish face, signaling her through towards the far side of the facility. It was tucked away in the other half of the L-shaped area, passing by the one exit for the patient facilities. Mary would always catch a glimpse of the fiery head-headed scientist that sat at a desk just beyond the clear, biotic-proof door, noticing that she was still blubbering on about something or other. She would have had pity if it weren't for the fact that the rest of the Alliance marine force did, and made that quite clear by hovering like buzzards at any opportunity.

As she approached the next entrance into the high security area, she hesitated her steps, noticing an odd buzzing ringing around the corner. It was coming from the clearance room, which was nothing more than a glorified closet that was meant to view the other side of the door in case of an emergency. Despite its humble origin, the sound was sharp enough to make her cringe, clenching her teeth onto what felt like stone. She stopped, resting her head against the wall to figure out what it was she was hearing; eventually, the swelling subsided into three voices, two in the room, the other echoing over radio static.

 _"These people, if they can even call themselves that anymore, are_ lying _to you—"_ a woman spoke over what Mary could only guess was an analogue radio. She was surprised they had even gotten it to work, much less sneak it outside of the barracks.

"Can you believe this shit?" one man huffed, sounding like he had something between his teeth. Mary could recall his name as Rosário and, as she suspected by their frequent shifts together, she knew the woman who would answer went by the name Estrela Dourada.

"Yeah, I believe it," Dourada sighed outwardly, her chair creaking beneath her.

"Listen, listen, listen…"

 _"Your families are not dead, they are imprisoned! Hidden away to find a "cure" for a condition that doesn't need to be healed!"_

"Can you _believe_ this?" he repeated, his pitch rising with his anger. "Honestly, we're the ones collecting up Frankenstein's rejects and _this_ is the thanks we get?"

"Well, that and making sure the Twelfth Labour doesn't get their hands on any of them."

"Right? Thank you!" Mary could hear him slap his knees. "Like I'm sorry your family members got fucked up by some mad scientists that, by the way, most of them signed up for in the first place—"

"Except those kids," his companion corrected.

"Except those kids," he affirmed solemnly, beginning to whisper after a time. "And those _kids_. Have you heard anything?"

"No more than you have," the woman replied, seeming to grow weary of listening to both him and the radio. "I don't know where they put them and, frankly, it's probably best we don't know."

"Yeah, I can see that…but—"

The conversation continued on without Mary's presence, feeling a hand press on her shoulder. She glanced up, finally noticing how slouched she was with her knees bent and her head listing to one side. Blinking back into reality, she saw the harsh, war-battered features of Commander Vega staring back at her, appearing both concerned and furious. Though, to be fair, there was never a time he didn't seem angered to some degree.

Vega walked past her, his bulky frame towering over the two in the room. "What the _hell_ are you doing with that in here?"

"C-commander!" Dourada stammered, her chair falling over as both of them stood to attention. "We were just coming off our lunch break."

"You are _never_ to be bring _any_ radio devices in the patient quarters, or did I not make myself clear in the briefing?" Vega growled, standing and catching a glimpse at what they were listening to. "And turn that garbage off!"

"Sir, yes, sir!"

As the radio was promptly switched off, every muscle in Mary's body melted with relaxation, sliding up against the wall until she stood properly. Vega glanced over to her and waited for a casual wave to continue, reaching into the room and pressing the entrance release himself. He shook his head in disappointment, scraping his armored fingers against the wall.

"Ditch digging duty, the both of you," he ordered, walking away slowly. "And don't ever let me catch you listening to that radio static again."

"Yes, sir," Dourada replied dejectedly, only waiting momentarily before whispering, "Man, screw fast tracking to officer status. Can't we get transferred back to Ilium?"

"Ah, yeah, that'd be nice," Rosário murmured a response. Mary finally drifted towards the entrance, peering in to find both their back were turned in an effort to clean up their lunches. "Haven't seen an asari maiden in _ages_. I heard there was this new dance club—"

Dourada had turned enough to meet Mary's gaze, her face becoming flushed with wide eyes. She remained transfixed on the woman in white, leaning slightly to get her rambling companion's attention. "Rosário…"

"And I guess the dancers are just the _hottest_ little things this side of a supernova—"

" _Rosário_ …" she breathed through her teeth.

"And they just get right up in there and _what the flying f—_ " Dourada managed to slam her elbow into Rosário's rib cage before reciting any more expletives. He nodded weakly in acknowledgement, wheezing through his shock and new found sense pain. "Ma'am."

Unflinching, Mary nodded politely, turned, and walked through the security gate. There was something about those two that could never find a middle ground for when to hold a conversation and when to find an appropriate topic. Even as she carried on to her destination, she could continue to hear them until the door shut.

"Dammit all, they need to put a bell on that one," Dourada wheezed, at least being mindful to keep her voice low.

"Yeah, that or a leash." Rosário was always a little less mindful.

When the doors closed behind her, the hall gave way to a final set of entries. Mary noticed several scientists standing around and murmuring quiet plans that became quieter as she approached. Vega was at the precipice of the first observational window speaking with Dr. Chakwas, exchanging pleasantries over a notebook that contained lists of data from previous experiments with Sandra. Being as this was her first encounter since she arrived, however, no one was sure if anything would be the same.

Chakwas smiled kindly as Mary approached, tucking a strand of lose, white hair behind her ear. "Ah, good morning, Ms. Bell. Thank you for coming."

"Morning," she shrugged. "Can't say it's a pleasure to be here, but what are you going to do?"

"Indeed," she replied with a nod. "We all appreciate your help in this matter regardless. Did you receive the question packet for this afternoon?"

"I did, but I'm not so sure she'll be so cooperative today," Mary nodded, her eyes drifting to the tinted window in the first entrance door. She could see the armored guards were already on standby. "I mean, far be it from me to stand in the way of progress, but I don't think you've given her enough time to forget."

Chakwas closed her notebook slowly as the scientists behind her pretended not to stare. "Forget? I'm sorry, I'm not sure I understand."

Mary's lips flattened in an awkward, hollow grin, elbowing Vega in the arm. "Looks like someone didn't read the information packet for this afternoon."

"Ah, doctor," Vega began, clearing the air of a sudden sinking feeling filling the air, "it was just a note buried in the back of the manual. Nothing to concern ourselves over right now. Shall we?"

Chakwas hesitated, staring intently at Mary who had turned away to gaze through the door's windows. Vega could tell she was contemplating the situation, going over all the things that could and potentially would go wrong. With the murmurs of the other scientists starting to increase, however, she made her decision with a short nod, joining the larger group in the monitoring room. With a heavy weight lifting from his chest, Vega looked back to Mary, setting a soft hand on her shoulder as to not startle her again.

"It'll be fine, we'll be on the other side of that monitor the entire time," he tried to reassure. "It'll be just like before."

"She wasn't a test subject before," she muttered, gesturing with a wave to the glowing screens watching the interior rooms. "She'll know you guys are looking for something."

He shook his head, motioning his hand against the lock screen. While the doors used an electronic triggering system, each door was mechanical, latching shut in the event of an emergency. It was either a singular signaling device that only Vega was allowed to keep or a crowbar – there was no getting in or out otherwise.

"Ready to go?" he asked.

"Why does everyone keep asking that?" she huffed, her eyes squinted in annoyance.

"Everyone?" he tilted his head, but was subsequently ignored as she entered the first room.

As the doors closed behind her, she stepped into a quiet hum reverberating across the cold, dark blue tile. The guards, fitted with slate gray armor accented in glowing light blue, were statuesque; if they hadn't shifted to open the next set of doors, she wouldn't have been sure they were alive. Though Sandra had been guarded in such a way for a while, Mary could never adjust to the sight. Even if it was necessary, it felt almost akin to a museum. Perhaps, in a way, it was — faceless protectors shielding relics of the past from both the outside world and themselves. Passing through into what seemed like another place and time made those feelings of uneasiness gave way, however, making room for the apprehension that seeped from the darkest recesses of her mind.

The last set of doors closed with a slight breeze of pressure, sealing her inside the bright, airy room. Different colored textiles hung from string around the room, painted and dyed in oddly exact geometric patterns. A yellow glow brightened the frosted windows and the otherwise dreary room, the same silhouettes of raindrops patterning the walls. Her room was set up as she remembered it back on Earth, with some blank canvases lying about the room and others up on easels. In the far right corner of the room, Sandra stood painting away, gentling pressing brushstrokes into the picture as she stared quietly at one of the opaque glass surfaces, being one of the few things that divided them from the glowing ocean just out of reach.

Mary approached the woman with dark, choppy hair slowly, scuffing her feet and patting her sides to make as much quiet noise as possible. "What's the subject today?"

Sandra's brush slowly came to a halt, giving one last swipe before her stance shifted. Her head tilted curiously, examining her work before turning her gaze to meet Mary's. The hum in the room grew louder as she smiled, Mary trying to keep a stoic appearance as she finally saw her eyes for the first time in a while; they were so much worse than she remembered. Dark blue with outlines of a blackened void, her pupils were surrounded by a thick, glowing rings, woven symmetrically into three circles. Her eyelids and her smile lines were starting to peel back with charred-looking skin, illuminated softly with dark blue shapes she could only think of describing as a circuit board. Gazing upon it filled her with terror, though not entirely for Sandra's sake.

"It just kind of feels sad, you know?" Sandra wondered monotonously, her thick accent rolling her words alongside her body. She faced her painting and the window again as she stepped back slowly.

"What is?" she asked quietly, clasping her fingers tightly in front of her. Mary wasn't entirely sure why she felt so nervous all of the sudden, but it ate at her like a maw of a serpent.

"She's crying again for them," she sighed, her gaze wide in contemplation. Her fingers slowly wrapped around Mary's shoulders when she stepped beside her, pressing her chipped, dirtied nails into the white fabric. "She's getting far too old to concern herself with such things, though. Such a pity. Such a waste of time. Yet it's only time she has forever of."

Mary humored her despite her lack of comfort, examining the painting like she had with many of Sandra's works. In most cases, her subjects were fanciful landscapes, combining a mixture of sharp colors in dull, dark compositions of seas and fields. There would always be vaguely humanoid silhouettes - sometimes as trees, other times as waves, but most times there would be wispy, shadowy figures in the corners or in the far distance. The image she was staring at was none of these things, however. Out of the smeared, dark gray background rose a woman made of molten rock, reaching up with a flaming hand as her twisted skirt began to cool to the earth below. Teal colored flowers sprouted from the fissures created by the cataclysm she bore, gazing longingly at the stars that fell above them. It was terribly sad, seemingly reflecting on the emotions she could no longer bring herself to express.

Breaking from the trance that had her vision spiraling into the painting, Mary smiled, glancing over at Sandra's pale lips. "How are you feeling today, Sandra?"

The woman let out a heavy sigh, shaking her head as she slipped her hands away. "Oh, you know, just the usual tiredness. The weather certainly hasn't been helping."

"No, I wouldn't imagine so," she replied, crossing her arms and watching as she sat down at a small set of copper-plated tables and chairs. It was technically meant for the outside, designed for some rose garden or consort's balcony, but Sandra refused to be without it. "Hopefully it'll let up soon."

"Yes, well, whenever people decide to stop _leaving_. It's so rude to just up and go without saying anything," she heaved a reply, patting the seat across from her. Mary hesitated, even for the briefest moment, and Sandra pouted her lips in concern. "What's wrong, Mary? You seem paler than normal. Have you been eating enough?"

"I'm fine, Sandra," she waved playfully as she sat, "but thank you anyways."

"The food here is terrible, isn't it?" she asked, motioning to to empty chair across the table. "We - that is, including José - were just discussing it. Everything is so bland here, not even a drop of _cachaça_!"

The muscles in Mary's shoulders tensed, staring blankly at the woman who continued to ramble on about the conditions they were in to the man named José. He was, as far as records could tell, Sandra's husband, a low ranked infiltrator and smuggler for Cerberus's operations on Earth. Though they had gotten married sometime towards the end of the war, their private lives were kept secret from practically everyone, including their immediate families. Eventually documentation became a necessity when Sandra resigned from her career as an art instructor at a local university and was hospitalized due to complications from her first pregnancy. Complication stemming from her husband's chosen career.

Though life had been briefly happy for them, events started to spiral out of control when José began to show signs of what all Cerberus operatives fell victim to. The experimentation of Reaper nanites amongst their agents was not a well-kept secret when many individuals were left to tell their tale to anyone who would listen. Soldiers, civilians, and even their own people were test subjects. Much like the others who were infected with Reaper technology, however, it slowly ate away at them, leaving them as husks of their former selves.

Sandra always enjoyed talks with her husband, though. They seemed to carry on with the most spirited, interesting of conversations, and Mary could tell Sandra genuinely adored him. It was a shame she never had the chance to meet him — after all, he had been dead for over two years.

"Wouldn't be doing anyone any favors if we keep ignoring what's happening."

Mary blinked out of her distant stare, finally realizing that Sandra was leaning forward on her hips. Her striking eyes were strikingly wide, trying to gaze into the face that was avoiding her own. Mary tried to play off her startled gasp for a yawn.

"Mary, what's the matter?" Sandra said quietly, drowned out over the rain that became increasingly louder. "You seem out of sorts."

"It's nothing," she shook her head, tucking loose strands of hair behind her ear. "I've just been a little tired lately. Seems like I need to catch up on some sleep."

"It's certainly been hard for you since the move," she sighed, shrugging as she sat back.

"Yeah, moving away from my grandma's house wasn't easy. The climate change alone was—"

"No, not that move, silly," Sandra chuckle, her expression growing dark despite her smile. "You know. _This_ move."

Mary paused, her fingers pulling at the fabric around her knee. "I'm not sure I follow."

"Oh, come on, you can't hide that from us!" she gave a haughty laugh. "Isn't that right, José? We know what's happening here."

"What, the bad food?" Mary tried to play it off casually, although deep down she knew the conversation wasn't going quickly downhill.

"Well, not entirely," her eyes began to glow brighter than usual. "Why do you think we were brought here, Mary? To this place that never sleeps? That never dies?"

"Sandra," Mary said slowly, "where are you right now?"

"Why did we leave Vancouver? Was it really to help us, or simply to save themselves?"

"Sandra," she repeated louder, "where are you?"

"What?" her bubbly expression came back after a moment. "We're just here having a lovely conversation—"

"Sandra," she interrupted, suddenly reaching forward and grabbing Sandra's folded hands, "are you in there?"

There was a long, unsettling pause as the room fell horrifically quiet, silencing even the sound of the rain. Sandra's head listed to the side slightly as her eyes once again dimmed, becoming almost deathlike in her stillness. Eventually, almost as if life was breathed back into her, she inhaled and sat up, smiling sweetly despite her clear confusion.

"I'm sorry, what was I saying?"

"Nothing important," Mary replied kindly, squeezing her hands and letting them slip away from her before standing. "You were just going to get back to your painting. I just stopped by for a quick visit."

"Of course, thank you for coming, Mary," she answered quietly, glancing over to the artwork across the room. She seemed unsure of how it got there. "I always look forward to our visits, but you be sure to get lots of rest. You don't seem too well."

"I'm fine, but thank you, Sandra," Mary stepped up to the exit doors, waiting for an escape that was out of her hands. "I'll be back later to catch up."

When the doors had opened and she was left in the space between, she stared blankly ahead as the decontamination procedure commenced. Even though she could hear the muffled voices booming over analogue speakers, she was unwavering in her cold, expressionless appearance. It gave her time to think of all the things that might have gone wrong, that _had_ gone wrong for something like that to occur, even if it had only been a few minutes. As the flood of noise from the outside overtook her sense, however, she finally managed to ground herself to what was happening.

"Are you alright?" Vega greeted, seeing her deadened gaze.

"Fine," she answered shortly, hushed compared to the noise coming from the monitor room.

"What happened?" Dr. Chakwas stepped towards her, concern riddling her voice. "We took every precaution coming here. Is there something else we might have missed?"

"Page 87."

"Pardon?"

Mary finally turned her head to look at both of them. "Page 87 in the precautionary guide. You should probably glance over it."

The two stood dumbfounded for a moment, Chakwas walking over to a filing cabinet next to a row of highly shielded computer servers. She reached into one of the larger drawers to pull out a hefty, spiral bound text, sifting through the wafer thin pages before finding what she might need. After struggling to carry it open for a moment, Vega approached her, grabbing it by the indented page between his thumb and the palm of his hand.

"This is the section on fidelity," Chakwas noted. "What is it that I should be looking for?"

"The operating procedure involving a patient's memory," she began, watching as both their eyes scrolled over the impossibly minuscule font. "The part where it says to allow to ample time for the host's brain to "reset" to the desired time frame. Always hated that word. Makes it sound like she's a computer."

"I...don't remember this," Chakwas admitted, looking up at Vega. He shook his head, confirming her suspicions that he didn't either.

"None of you do," she replied, patting at her pockets. "I didn't realize it at first, but she made you forget."

"What?" Vega asked aghast, the assistant scientists becoming quiet. "How?"

"You know how."

"No, I mean _how_ , how did this happen?"

Mary paused, finally finding the lighter buried beneath the lining of her stark white dress. "The radio."

"... _Sonofabitch!_ "

The room, outside of Mary, collectively jumped as he slammed the book to the floor, some of its pages flittering into the air. Even the guards inside the containment room glanced through the windows to see what the commotion was about. Vega gritted his teeth with a deep sigh of disappointment, placing his hands on his hips.

"Radio? What radio?" Chakwas broke through the silence, terrified anger seething in her voice as much as she could muster.

"A couple of the new recruits," Vega mumbled, staring at the ceiling in thought.

"James, why didn't you say anything? There are to be _no_ electronic communication devices past the entry point for a reason!"

"I know! I'm handling it!"

"I'll be outside if anyone needs me," Mary said monotonously, though she was quite sure no one heard her outside of their arguing.

She made her way through the halls with growing speed, the throbbing ache in her head building behind the back of her eyes. She could almost feel something at her heels, trying to pin her down and keep her from going too far. In retrospect, she probably should have said she was going all the way outside, but it didn't matter. Figuring out how behind they would become on research would keep them busy for a while, and it wasn't like much of anything could stop her — the walls, the lights, everything around her was suffocating.

Drifting by the receptionist who was still soundlessly crying all by her lonesome, she was once again met by a sudden rush of noise. The rain hitting the buildings, the sand, the water — it was like blaring static. It didn't bother her like she thought it would, but she was certainly taken aback by the stark change. Her emotionless expression faltered for a moment, her eyebrows and lips twitching in discomfort as her eyes narrowed in the gray haze. The longer she stood still, the more she started to notice her hands shaking, crossing her arms and stepping out towards the covered patio.

Mary couldn't pull the cigarettes from her side fast enough, her clothing and hair soaked through. Though she fumbled with the paper sleeve beginning to stick to its contents from the water drenching her gloves, the unmitigated frustration burning in her chest gave her enough willpower to get one between her teeth. Being too eager to finally relax for a moment, she collected herself from any potentially prying eyes before grabbing her lighter, flicking it open.

It didn't light.

She bit down on the end of the cigarette, closing the lid again and pressing her thumb on the ignition pedal.

Again, it didn't light.

Mary was becoming overflowed with both anger and panic, her body weighed down by what felt like quicksand. Her lungs burned regardless of the lack of smoke, drowning in the noise she couldn't gather respite from. As her thumb became numb and her hands shook too much for her to take, her composure collapsed under the weight of her rage, screaming the blaze out of her insides as she threw the lighter into the waves and let the cigarette fall to the wayside.

"Uh, Mary?"

" _Goddammit_!" she shouted, turning to face the voice behind her. She didn't even process whose voice it might have been before responding. " _What?!_ What do you...want..."

Tertius stood silently with his right hand against a support pillar, pausing from wiping the rain from his face. He wasn't entirely sure how to process what he had just seen himself; he had never seen Mary in such a state. Not since her parents had died, anyway.

"Are you alright?" he asked, his right hand extended in concern.

"What does it look like?" she snapped, unable to stop to words from leaving her throat. For anyone else it would have been her almost automated response.

"I...My mistake," he apologetically nodded slightly, his arms falling to his sides as his feet began to travel backwards. "That was stupid of me to ask. I'll just be on my way."

"Wait, Tertius, that's not…" she drifted, running her hands back over her hair to calm herself. She waited to see if he would stop before continuing and, thankfully, he did. "What are you doing out here?"

"I was just on my way to see Chakwas about a book," he shrugged, his mandibles hugged closely to the sides of his face in embarrassment.

Mary blinked slowly, her weight shifting to one side, "A book."

"Yes, it's for...Well, I'm still not entirely sure," he answered thoughtfully. "I guess it's part of a psychoanalysis of some sort."

She smiled watching his eyes dart away from her, rubbing away the ache in the back of his neck that she knew wasn't actually there. Taking out her packet of nearly disintegrating paper, she found whatever dry tobacco sticks she could, setting one in her mouth almost habitually.

"She's a trip, huh?" she played off his reservation with the same sense of false naivety, adjusting the drooping scarf around her lip. "Yeah, I'm just on break from a shift with her. She's going to be busy for a bit so if you have anything better to do than watch a gray fog roll through I'd suggest doing that instead."

"Do you want a light for that?" he chuckled, watching her pause oddly in thought.

She stared intently at him for a time, surprised that he would even mention it. "Aren't you allergic?"

"I think you need it more than any momentary discomfort I'd have," he flicked a grin, cuing his omni-tool to start the small flame cutting tool on his left wrist. "Here. Have at it."

Mary became almost statuesque in his mind, her pale figure fading into the dreary hues around them. Her light blue eye just stared at him for the longest time, as if she couldn't quite come to terms with his gesture. The muscles on her face contorted into a bemused but oddly defeated expression, removing the cigarette from her mouth and hesitating as he extended his arm a bit more. With a sigh that almost sounded bereaved, she looked away and she placed the paper over the flame, glancing back quickly when the smell of smoke wafted into the humid air. Though she held the cigarette away, she reached out and wrapped her fingers around one of his, slowly squeezing it. He wasn't sure what to say, watching the water from her blond hair run over her face that finally showed genuine emotion. It was as if she didn't expect him to be there.

"I lied. I'm...not fine," she spoke quietly, jerking her hands away. Mary placed the burning paper in the left corner of her mouth, watching the gold flames warm his image. "But we'll be fine. Just...later, okay?"

He nodded slowly in acknowledgement, stepping away. It was clear that she needed her space, and Tertius knew to respect that; he understood more than most what that could mean to a person.

"Okay," he replied with a small wave, heading back to his quarters and leaving her to her peace. "I'll be here if you need me."

Gazing after him as he jogged out of the rain, it wasn't peace that she was left with. Not in the way he believed at least. Inhaling with choppy breaths brought a pain to her chest that she hadn't felt in ages, the water around her eyes becoming warm despite the stoic expression she tried desperately to keep.

—

 _Mary,_

 _I honestly cannot believe I am writing this, but the strangest thing happened today. I was watching the orange light outside of my room, trying desperately to sleep, and it started to_ _snow_ _. Actual, fluffy, crystallized water that would have gone unnoticed had it not been for their shadows. The Reapers really did a number on Palaven's atmosphere_ — _I was told it never got this cold before._

 _It reminded me of the time you talked about the mountains. How the sunrise would almost change the colors of the world if you watched it at just the right moment. I wonder now, if I had not been here at this moment, I would not have been reminded of that time. I miss it so. I miss_ —

 _I hope it snows where you are, and that you see the changing colors of the sunrise you loved so._

 _I hope you are happy, wherever you are._

— _Tertius_

* * *

Sorry once again for the delay. D: New years had me swamped, but thanks for standing by!

In the meantime, tunes to listen to, (Moon Ate the Dark - Explosions In A Four Chambered Heart): watch?v=Kbn8D2bdWKI


	7. Does a Heartfelt Scar Spread?

[Does] a Heartfelt Scar Spread?

The irony of working for the Alliance after her fallout with the Earth's government was not lost on her. The death of her family and the lives lost of countless others could be placed on their shoulders, but the negligence with the Reapers wasn't entirely their own. Growing older had given her time to reason all the ways communication had dissolved in a complacent galaxy filled with denial of their own weaknesses, and she grew to pity those who had been in command. Observing the aftermath of one of life's greatest tribulations was enough to make them penitent. There was no greater shame than to view a constant reminder of their failures, especially in the afflictions of the innocent. That was the only reason she could figure why she put up with everything - not for the Alliance themselves, but for those they were entrusted to care for.

Mary always dreaded the morning rounds, so much so that she stopped doing them alone. Finding another patient dead from an aneurysm was not exactly uncommon, but it never became any easier to see them like that. There were never any signs before it happened; they would be perfectly alert the day before, go to sleep, and never wake. Despite the merciful way it happened, Mary could never shake the anger she felt towards the situation. The Alliance may not have been wholly guilty for the Reapers, but they were certainly condemnable for the things that came after.

Thankfully, the patient she was assigned to that day was as alive and vibrant as ever. Even at 87, Mrs. Madeline Howlett was spritely. She would never have anyone in her room before "making herself decent", as she would say, with her bobbed white neatly combed and her makeup always done just so. There would be a fleeting comment about her pale green eyes becoming clearer with each passing session, but she would simply tie it into a compliment about her treatment. In any case, the usual breakfast inspection was always a pleasure.

"You think with all the advancements in today's world they'd figure out some way not to burn the oatmeal," Mrs. Howlett said unamused, poking at the gray mush piled into an oddly pyramid-like mound.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Howlett, I'll be sure to tell the kitchen to fix it." Commander Vega was eager to help any way he could despite his rough exterior, especially with the patients. Perhaps there was an engrained memory that provided a well of pity within his tired mind. Perhaps it was just a sense of kindness he knew was missing from the various forms of organic life remaining in the galaxy.

"Forget the oatmeal, just get me a bowl of cereal!" she laughed, shaking her head. "Wheaties! Cheerios! I'll even settle for Raisin Bran at this point!"

Mary smiled warmly, sliding away her tray table off to the side. "We'll be sure to keep that in mind for next time."

The smaller, windowless room left much to be desired in terms of space, but at least there was a dedicated staff to tidy up immediately following any patient's absence. Those with her level of illness weren't in their rooms very long anyway — they were shooed out into a walled-off courtyard to get both fresh air and diligent observations recorded about them, doing other activities in a large, open sunroom on rainy days. Madeline wouldn't be going with the rest that day, however, as she was scheduled for much more important tests in the designated clinic specifically designed for the Alliance "guests".

"Are you ready, Mrs. Howlett?" Vega asked, extending an armored hand to her. It was sometimes hard to hear him behind his helmet speaker, but his expressions were enough to give context.

"I was _born_ ready," she joked with a stern rumble in her voice, holding her arms towards him. "Hoist me up, handsome!"

The inside of Mary's lip dove between her teeth, keeping her smirk to a minimum as his hulking figure gingerly lifted the frail woman to her feet. Despite her cheery disposition, Mary could see the dark red scars along her bare arms leading underneath her white gown, glancing away from seeing the blackened edges that still remained. Fixing her gaze to the floor, she moved to open the door for them, their continued conversation becoming muffled in her head. Her fingers twitch along the pocket seams on her hip, a suffocating burn tightening her chest regardless of how comfortable the climate was controlled. The feeling passed, however, as she finally relented her eyes to the smiling old woman, returning the gesture with a happy nod and turning off the lights behind them.

"Is there any good reason that in this day and age they're still using on/off switches?" Mrs. Howlett pondered, her fluffy yellow slippers sliding along the cold, gray floor. "In my day automatic devices were all the rage. Almost annoyingly so. Couldn't find a _single_ toilet that wouldn't spray you before sitting down, so we just learned to cover it with paper before getting close. Defeated the purpose but, boy, were people desperate for them."

"I can see how that would be aggravating," Vega chuckled, tapping her arm that was neatly being escorted by his own. "We try to limit automated devices here, though. There's a lot of interference—"

"From the outside, yeah?" she bobbed a finger, shrugging after a moment. "That's right, I remember you telling me that."

"You do? When did I tell you about that again?"

"Hey, now, don't patronize me, young man," she huffed. "When you get to be my age you'll be lucky to remember where you put your matching socks."

"No patronizing here, ma'am, just curious," he replied sincerely, looking over his shoulder at Mary. His mouth slowly formed into a frown in seeing her running her gloved hand along the light blue stripe on the wall. "Do you remember when we had that talk, Mary?"

"Hm? Oh, yeah, a few weeks ago," she replied, looking up from the tiled floor. "It was during that painting session where your tree looked like a lamp."

"It was a pretty good lamp, though," he said, motioning to the clear set of double doors ahead of them. "Can you grab the entrance for us?"

"Sure," she answered quietly, her movements becoming hesitant as she felt Vega's eyes becoming suspicious behind her.

Though the entryway had slight pressurization, the room beyond wasn't nearly as sealed or guarded as other areas were. It was the only place with any highly electrified equipment in the facility, the buzz from the machines within reverberating off the frosted glass and through her fingertips as she held them open. A few scientists lingered along the edges in cumbersome yet isolated hazmat suits, too ingrained in their work to notice them enter and giving them space to help Mrs. Howlett inside. The room itself was fairly modest in size — a rectangular area with a low ceiling that hid most of its secrets behind a dark blue hue. Much like an infirmary, there were specialty beds lined up against one wall with massive, black machines blinking with green lights. Those machines powered what were essentially sleeping pods, housing a complicated system that could provide the most effective form of treatment for the patients. The bright white padding was almost blinding to look at directly, only mitigated by the blue glow the clear pod covers were lit by.

"Now, Mrs. Howlett, you'll be in here for a little bit longer than usual," Vega continued, guiding her to sit on the nearest bed. She was the first of several patients that were to be treated that day, but she was always particular to get "her" bed nearest to the entrance. "Is there anything you need done today?"

"No, no, I know the drill by now," she said, swinging her arms in a stretch. She looked over at Mary, smiling sweetly. "Be more like this one and stop doting on me! I'm healthy as a horse! Probably even healthier than before Cerberus infected us with this garbage."

"I'll try my best," he chuckled, holding her hands as she laid down. He stood back while Mary placed a clear face mask over her and adjusted a few monitors, holding the pod's lid open. "We'll be back to pick you up for dinner. Have a great nap."

"Absolutely!" she waved playfully. "It's a date!"

Vega closed the cover gently, a loud hiss creating a breeze around them shortly as they watched the elderly woman slip into unconsciousness. With the machine flickering into its work, the room became uncomfortably still, the pair standing in silence. As a technician's voice range out over the intercom for an "all clear", Mary heard the click of Vega's helmet.

"She reminds me of your abuela," he said softly, his voice clearer and his emotions more evident. "Just with less smoking and rampant alcoholism."

"Hey, if I remember correctly, you never said no to her mint juleps," Mary argued, crossing her arms. "And this one here had stage 4 lymphoma."

"Yeah, _had_ being the key word," he mumbled, shaking his head with a sigh. "I know I've said it before but this just feels...off to me, somehow."

"You know what they say," Mary began, placing her hand upon the glass, "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. There's just a huge asterisk next to this one, flashing 'may or may not kill others in the process.'"

A disquieted hush fell between them once more, Mary's fingers pressing hard as her hand slipped away in thought. Her face remained emotionless in the faded luminescence, Vega shifting slightly under the increasing weight on his shoulders. Though technicians flitted around them for a time to observe any initial readings, Mary's eyes were unwavering despite a hand resting on her shoulder.

"Are you alright, 'manita?" he said in a hushed voice, making sure the scientists were well out of earshot before continuing. "You haven't been your usual self lately."

"And which self is that?" she replied snidely, glancing up to a concern set of eyes. She averted her gaze again, holding her elbows. "Sorry, no, I'm okay. I've just had a lot on my mind."

"Such as?" he asked, his lips flattening with her gaze narrowing in annoyance. "You know you can talk to me, right? Just because I got a few extra badges for killing some bad guys doesn't mean we're not friends."

"Don't be so humble," she grinned. "You also resurrected some good guys. Your parents might as well have called you Jesús."

"I wouldn't go that far," he chuckled, turning towards her. "It was those...things that did most of the work."

"Yeah," she drifted, inhaling deeply. "Too bad they have to be little bastards about it, though."

He nodded shortly, moving his helmet from between his palms to the crook on his arm. "I'm going to go ahead and get the next person. Take all the time you need."

"Thanks for helping out, James," she said quickly, leaning towards him as he stepped away.

"No problem. I enjoy this more than shoveling papers around a desk all day, that's for sure," he replied, clicking his helmet back into place and strolling to the exit. He nodded his head to the side in acknowledgement of the others there, her ears eventually popping in his absence.

The room fell quiet again while the scientists made themselves scarce, the noise of the machines rattling her chest. She watched as blue light would crawl from old wounds, glowing vibrantly green while it weaved intricate patterns just below the skin. Intermittently a red band of light would spiral through the pod, any illumination on the surface fading suddenly into dark gray dust. Mary was glad to see that the treatment worked for some, but, as she exhaled a shakily held breath, she knew it would never get any easier to watch.

"This is a dangerous game to play."

Mary blinked slowly, recognizing the voice and covering her mouth in thought. "Yeah, but what other choice did we have?"

"Let nature take its course?"

"You call this _nature_?" she hissed in a whisper, glancing over to the woman standing beside her. "That's probably the dumbest thing I've heard out of your mouth in a while, Anna."

The blond haired woman shrugged, pulling her hand away from Mary's shoulder, "I mean, even Lovecraftian horrors are, in a sense, a force of nature."

"Oh, _look at you_ , being the cultured woman all of the sudden," she jested, her hand still obstructing her smile. "Tell me, when did you learn to read?"

"Same day you learned to be a wise-ass," Anna mumbled facetiously, turning to lean up against the pod with her hip. "But I didn't come down here to tell you what you already know. How're the rounds treating you?"

"Fine," she said, her left eye fluttering in a roll.

"Just fine?" Her brow wrinkled with a questioning smile. "A second ago you looked like you were ready to have a mental break."

"This is just the way I always look," she deadpanned, although even Mary wasn't quite sure how jokingly it was. "I'd rather not be talking like this in front of the whole research division."

"Between the whispering and you covering your mouth like that, they can't hear a thing through those suits," Anna waved dismissively. "Besides, they're not even paying attention. You could throw a Reaper at them and they still wouldn't look up."

Mary shook her head with a short, closed-mouth sigh, turning on her heels towards the exit. She could feel Anna's light blue eyes boring into her back, relentless despite her quick pace to the doors. The breeze of the pressurized room followed behind her, noticing the white light above her flicker as she hurried down the hall. Her hearing became dull to the world towards everything except the voice that came after her.

"Are you going to tell him?"

Mary paused, looking over her shoulder before slowly turning. She was met with a sincerely concerned look from Anna, clasping her hands over her stomach. With a slight flick of a grin, Mary looked about, making sure no one was in earshot.

"Who, Vega? What doesn't he know already?" she gave a hollow laugh, although her roommate's continued silence was telling enough. Deep down, she knew exactly who she was talking about.

"Why do you keep playing their game?" her tone suddenly became stern. "Don't you deserve to talk about this to someone who isn't using you?"

Mary was taken aback by Anna's forwardness, catching her breath in her throat. Flustered, she blinked profusely, scoffing at the idea — any idea — that came to her. She couldn't find the words to pass off the presumably simple questions as just that, unable to lie about the complexity that dug in like a knife to her neck.

"Why? What does it matter?" she barely kept from choking, throwing her arms up with a smirk as she started to walk away. "It'll just hurt worse."

—

He wasn't sure what was worse — descending into a blackened abyss with only a sliver of light to speak of, or being sat in front of a purgatory of static and mundane science experiments, all of which being outdated or nonsensical. If anyone told him the Alliance made note of every last detail from their excursions out into the surrounding waters, he wouldn't have believed it. It was almost excessive levels of vid recordings, most of the audio muted and large chunks turning into colorful data blocks. There was almost a pattern, and if he had cared at all he might have looked more into it. Time passed as a sort of critic's hour, however, and he was just glad he had someone to vent his frustrations to.

"Ugh, _again_ with the coral deposit analysis?" Keeda rocked back in her seat, waving her arms disapprovingly in the dusty air. "We get it, it glows! That's just the way its DNA was written!"

"They can't hear you, you know," Tertius hummed in amusement, turning over a few transcription notes from the vid projected onto the far wall. "In fact, I'm pretty sure these scientists aren't even on the planet anymore."

"I know, I know," she groaned, shaking her head. "They probably moved on to better and more mundane things. But why did it have to be on smoker night?"

"I think you mean 'poker' night," he corrected, watching her sit up straighter after a moment of reflection.

"It's not 'poker,'" she made air quote with her two fingers, "it's smoker! Right? We're not poking things with an iron rod!"

The papers in his hands lowered slowly, tilting his head with the most confused expression he could muster. "I mean...you're not _wrong_. But the card game itself is called poker."

"Oh…" she trailed in thought, the pale light of the flickering screen reflecting off her facemask. "Humans have such strange names for things."

"You're not wrong there either," he muttered quietly, seemingly less gleeful than before.

Keeda glanced at her side to the man sitting behind a desk, watching him trace the wood grain with his talons. It was quite evident that he wasn't aware of his awkwardness; his mind was almost always elsewhere, going over words from another place and time that weren't written in front of him. Though mostly everyone, including her husband, was oblivious to it, Keeda found watching him both heartwarming and heartbreaking, unable to understand why he was behaving the way he was. It was worrisome to know that there was a distance he couldn't traverse, a moment in time that walled him away from ever speaking of it and, ultimately, kept him from what he cared about most.

"Say, have you invited Mary to one of our outings yet?" she asked, subconsciously tapping her right foot. "I'm sure she'd enjoy it."

"I'm sure she would," he replied slowly, running his right thumb along his cheek. "I haven't seen her much, though. Exchanged pleasantries and the like, but that's all."

"I see," she tilted her head, drawing out her words carefully as she continued. "Have you talked to her about anything yet?"

His hand moved from his face and dropped onto the desk lazily. "What's there to talk about?"

"Oh, I don't know," her voice became playfully annoyed, "there's a few things I can think of, starting with all those letters you sent."

The gray hue of his face became slightly bluer, his mandibles pressing against his teeth disapprovingly. "And just why would I rehash any of those?"

"I don't know, maybe she didn't get the message," she shrugged, standing when she noticed the vid had finally stopped. "You always go on about how difficult translations are between species."

"That's because they are," he pointed at her, leaning back in his chair. "But there was nothing in those letters that could be misunderstood. I made sure of it."

"Did you _really_ , though?" she inquired, leaning down to a white plastic crate. It was part of a set of files from Dr. Chakwas, specifically, containing old personnel documents that were once tucked away in a dusty closet somewhere. Though it seemed like a pretty useless task, the Hierarchy demanded all records be analyzed 'just in case'. Perhaps it wasn't just the Alliance that was obsessively observant. "Unless you're saying human languages aren't _that_ hard."

"No, human languages are awful," he groaned, crossing his arms. Keeda bit her lip to keep from laughing, knowing exactly what she was doing to get him on a tangent. "Look, you know how turian language is straightforward?"

"Sure, which also includes some scent recognition that tells who a person is and their emotional state. It makes it hard for turians to be subtle sometimes, though," she humored him, glancing at a dark blue disk case that was wedged tightly underneath heavier files. She wouldn't have noticed it if it hadn't been for the green recording light reflecting from her visor.

"Humans don't have that. Sure they have body language like everyone else, but their dialects are basically driven by context and inflection. It's maddening sometimes to say or write something and it has a completely different meaning depending on how and why it's being said."

"Every language has that, though," she corrected, waving the disc at him loosely before setting it into the vid player. "Just in other ways. And humans are more...touchy-feely, like asari."

"Yeah, but it's…" He sighed, closing his eyes as his brow plates furrowed. "It's different. I don't know how to explain it, but it is."

" _Are you married? You never mentioned that."_

Keeda paused and sat back down, watching as the noticeably older vid started flickering to life. "Maybe you just need to think of a different way to say it. A way that she'll get the message."

Tertius hesitated to respond, his eyes falling to the side as thoughts welled behind them. He hadn't really considered it before, if only because of the defeated feelings that pressed down on him. Much like the drafts that hid away in his writing drawer, it was as good a time as any to revise all the things he needed to say.

" _What the hell is this? How can we remember the same thing?"_

He was suddenly pulled from his lost sense of comfort to a much more harrowing reality, sitting up straight while the grainy, black and white footage danced across the wall. Unsure what to make of it at first, he looked at the dark blue disc cover resting along the desk's edge, noticing it was only labeled crudely with 'SR-2 - Derelict'. Teritus tapped his sister-in-law gently on the shoulder, her posture rigid and her gaze transfixed on the passing images.

"Hey, where did you get this?" he asked quietly.

She shook her head, "Just the bottom of the box."

" _We finished cataloguing specimens A203 to B016. No evidence of active nanotechnology noted. Dr. Chandana believes they would have decayed over the past 37 million years. There's no evidence to support his claim. He asserts that the truth is 'patently obvious'. I am...concerned. Chandana has been staring at the samples for hours. He says he's 'listening' to them."_

"What...even is this?" Keeda asked aloud, her chair creaking lightly as she shifted her weight uncomfortably.

"I don't know," he replied, his right hand beginning to wring his left wrist. "This doesn't look like sample testing experiments. I don't even think it's on this planet."

She glanced over her shoulder, "How can you tell?"

"The uniforms," he pointed at the changing scenes. "They're Cerberus."

 _"Third day with this headache. You'd think Chandana would have let me take a few hours off_ — _Godddamn!"_

 _"What?"_

 _"That thing that just...gray thing! It disappeared when I looked at it. Came out of the damn wall! Where we took off that panel."_

 _"I didn't see anything. You should lie down."_

 _"I'm telling you, this ship isn't dead. It knows we're inside it."_

 _"Calm down. Now I'm getting a headache."_

"Should we even be watching this?" Tertius asked quietly, as if speaking any louder would cause those on the screen to notice.

Keeda shrugged, her nervous laugh echoing through her helmet speaker. "I mean, they told us to watch everything, so we're watching it. These are just personnel files, right? It's not like they're classified or anything."

"I guess," he replied.

Resting his elbows on his armrests, he clasped his hands together with deep contemplation. He knew that the two of them were both becoming horrified by the sight they saw, but were too intriguing to look away. As the bloody face of a man became the last entry, however, he realized there was more to it than just the ravings of a lunatic. There was something going on behind his eyes, as if he were actually talking to the person behind the camera.

 _"Chandana said the ship was dead. We trusted him. He was right. But even a dead god can dream. A god — a real god — is a verb. Not some old man with magic powers. It's a force. It warps reality just by being there. It doesn't have to want to. It doesn't have to think about it. It just does. That's what Chandana didn't get. Not until it was too late. The god's mind is gone but it still dreams. He knows now. He's tuned in on our dreams. If I close my eyes I can feel him. I can feel every one of us."_

The vid's light wobbled with static briefly before dying, leaving them to a pressing silence of the dusty room. Something gray. Headaches. A panel in the wall. All of the things mentioned were drawing him back onto the Citadel, the sound of metal scraping against the ductwork echoing in his mind. The dusty room began to smell like oil and blood despite knowing, without a doubt, it only contained old paper and plastic data discs. He tried to keep his left hand's fingers from twitching, sitting back abruptly as his shoulders felt the ache of the past.

"Huh, I've heard about the problems with red dust but this is a winner, I think!" Keeda spoke louder than usual, patting his shoulder and bringing him out of his anxiousness. Standing and waiting for a response, she quickly placed the disc into its container, loosely flinging it back in the crate. "See? Just an old drug analysis, I'd guess. Cerberus did a lot of messed up stuff back then."

"Yeah...I guess so."

Tertius pulled his right hand away from his wrist after he relaxed for a moment, a twinge of pain radiating in his left arm from holding it too closely. Looking up from his table, he noticed Keeda packing up quicker than normal; though it was the last day of record analysis for a while, her enthusiasm seemed a little too keen. He could tell that, even in her cheery, feigned ignorance, she was afraid. There was something wrong with those people that neither of them wanted to explore, leaving whatever thoughts they had at the bottom of the box.

"Are you coming to smpoker?" she diverted the subject, stumbling to replace the words she already knew.

"Yeah, I'll sit in on a few rounds," he said, standing and patting his uniform of any dust. He adjusted his right glove under his sleeve, making sure the seams lined up correctly.

"Oh, wonderful!" He could see the slight reflective glow from her eyes smiling. "Caien will be excited to have you play a few games."

Tertius chuckled loosely, following her out into the hall and watching her manually lock the door behind her. The blinding heat of the day once again hit him painfully from the climate controlled room, knowing that it would only get worse once they were out of the shade. Still, he found himself more eager to participate with his family; the heat would remain the same in his room as it was out in the open, but the heaviness on his heart wouldn't.

"Let me guess, he thinks he can beat me?" he inquired jokingly, rubbing the ache out of his neck.

"I mean, doesn't he always?" she giggled, shaking her head. "Tell me, has he always been the competitive one or is this just a recent development?"

"No, he's always been like that," he affirmed, raising his right arm to shield his eyes from the golden sun. The ocean shimmered almost blindingly, projecting along the dark shadows of the mountainside in a smooth, almost cheerful dance. "He's never been one to lose any given situation. It's kind of irritating sometimes, but it wouldn't be him otherwise."

"Hm, he talks about such things a lot recently, though," she mused, pausing to see the large turnout. "Perhaps he's trying to get your attention?"

"No, I think he's trying to get yours," he flicked a grin, tapping the back of her helmet.

"Mine? Why me?" she batted his hand, wobbling her head disapprovingly as he walked away with a shrug.

"You're an expert on turian law and language, I'm sure you'll figure it out," he waved to his side, noticing her tap her foot amusingly as he moved to a quieter area.

He weaved through the commotion of heavily occupied tables, the lightheartedness he witnessed causing his anxiety to fade gently. Though being in close quarters with large groups still made him nervous, he knew that it would only get better if he subjected himself to it from time to time. The noise made him grit his teeth and the star scorching the planet radiated off the stone and metal patio, but he could find relief in a more shaded area around the corner.

"That'll kill you eventually, you know," a thick accent rumbled against the open walkway's walls, Tertius slowing his pace to study the sight before him carefully.

"A lot of things will kill me long before this does."

Zaeed Massani sat at one of the few woven wooden tables, painted a bright light blue that had faded over time. Sitting next to him was Mary, leaning back on her hip with one elbow on an armrest holding a cigarette thoughtfully. Tertius wasn't sure what he was expecting, but seeing the two talking so frankly, as if they had known each other for most of their lives, was not it.

"Still a nasty habit," Massani continued. "You know I knew a weapons dealer, almost your age. Stupid kid decided to smoke too close to a cache of explo—"

"Explosives and blew himself _sky-high_ ," Mary interrupted, rolling her eyes. "Yeah, yeah, you've told that story, what? Three? Four times now? Not surprising you don't remember."

"I'm surprised you still remember," he muttered, glancing over to find her eyes had diverted elsewhere. He shifted to look behind him, a disgruntled huff rattling from his throat to see the turian leisurely walk up. "Something we can help you with?"

"Just looking for a place to sit. The patio is packed," he replied, motioning to the empty chair beside them "You mind?"

"Have at it," Massani pushed the chair out with his foot, crossing his arms as he sat back. "We were just waiting for things to get organized."

"Well, _he_ is," Mary stated, flicking the ash to her side. "I'm not one for gambling."

"You're not one for going outside, let alone sitting through a tournament," he scolded, pointing a thumb at her when addressing Tertius. "Took enough convincing to get some sun on her. Looks sicker than most dying men I've seen, pale as their ghosts, and yet all I ever hear is how healthy she and these other—"

"Gee, thanks, _grandpa_ ," she talked over him again, hanging her mouth open mockingly.

"Hey, watch your tone. I could have been your grandpa," he chastised in matter-of-fact sort of way.

Mary barked a laugh, as empty of joy as it was, "Uh-huh, sure. You're not really grandma's type."

"She was pretty smooth on me the last time I saw her in Atlanta," he pondered humorously, obviously trying to get under her skin. By the contorted face she made, it clearly worked, biting down on the burning paper irritably. He smirked victoriously, looking back to the confused gentleman tapping his left hand on the table softly. "Sorry, where are my manners. Name's Massani."

"Tertius Aquilin. And I know, we've met a few times before," Tertius replied, gliding his wrist across the tabletop. "I don't blame you if you don't remember, though. It was a while ago."

"Really?" he wondered, his eyes narrow in thought. "Funny, I never forget a face. Where from?"

"Citadel security," he said, his gaze wandering loosely but never quite looking at Mary. "I used to work down at the docks."

Zaeed's jaw clicked, biting his tongue as he tried running through all the scenarios in his head; understandably, he had too many run-ins with Citadel security officers to really keep track. Tertius could tell it was slowly dawning on him when he stared at Mary, seeing her hold the cigarette underneath her chair. He gave a short chuckle at first, glancing between the two as if one of them would speak up first. Eventually, he clasped his hands together with a grin.

"Well, I'll be damned," he said mutedly, his shoulders bobbing when he turned towards Mary. "Really is a small universe, isn't it?"

Mary gave a plastic-like sneer, speaking through her teeth, "Don't you have a game to get to?"

"What? All I'm saying is that even ripping this galaxy a new one, the Reapers are somehow bringing people together, ay?" he stated, punching Tertius on his left shoulder. "Good to see someone's still alive after that bloodbath."

"The Citadel? We weren't there when it all went down." Tertius could almost touch the words he wanted to pull back into his throat before they left on the wind.

"Oh, yeah, you left for Sanctuary with that other group," he recalled, trying to envision it like it was yesterday. "I was out before anything went down, but I went back for cleanup. They were offering a lot of money for anyone to go near there. I took it, obviously, but that place...hm."

Mary's fake amusement had fallen away, striking the center of the table with a piercing study of concern with her face otherwise unexpressive. It took a lot for him not to ramble on with one of his stories, and the Citadel was a lot for anyone to come to terms with. In the silence she could feel Tertius looking at her, her foot halfway through the door to finally saying something but unable to move the cigarette away from her lips. With one last drag, she flicked it out onto the sand, standing and dusting off her hands.

"Hey, make sure the old man doesn't lose too much money, huh?" she motioned in Zaeed's direction with an elbow, placing her hands in her pockets.

"Excuse me? Does it look like I need micromanaging to you?" he protested, raising himself out of his chair with Tertius following suit. "I've won hundreds of thousands from the best card sharks on Ome—"

"I'll try my best," Tertius spoke alongside him, feeling his teeth part slightly as she turned to walk towards the patient facilities.

"That's fine, more winnings for me," Zaeed shrugged. "Off to fight more giants then?"

"There's no such thing as giants," she said flatly, barely giving him an irritable second look over her shoulder.

"What about the one Jack killed?"

Tertius caught the breath in his chest, finding a hole in the wall burying him into a dark blue sea of fear. He wasn't sure where it came from or why he had even thought of it, but he found his feet planted firmly waiting, hoping, that she would understand. Mary slid her feet sideways to face them again, her head tilted in quiet contemplation and wondering if she had really heard him right.

"Jack?" she asked slowly. "Jack who?"

His mandibles lifted in a smile. "Jack from 'Jack and the Beanstalk.'"

Her eye gleamed with the wheels of reminiscence rotating behind it, placing her hands on her hips defiantly. "I never heard of that."

"Sure you have," he zealously replied. "You must have forgotten. It's a fairytale."

"Oh...one of those," she said, her brows raising with levity. "I don't know any of those. My mother thinks they're silly."

For one brief, shining moment, she saw him sitting across from her on a couch, bathed in the golden hue from an old vid screen and finding hope where none existed. He could almost hear their previous lives in the way they spoke so plainly, without a care outside of a small apartment with the awful smell of ship fuel burning a hole through the carpet. It was fleeting, and the weight of the hot afternoon pressed them back into the ground until they cracked, but they were left standing in front of broken pieces that were at least breathing, and that was enough. Mary swept her feet beneath her and proceeded to walk away; for the first time in a long time, she felt the corners of her mouth begin to genuinely curve upward. Tertius tapped his left fingers against the top of his chair, glancing over to Zaeed.

"Well, time to lose a bunch of credits?" he asked cheerfully.

Zaeed stood back, squinting at him suspiciously. "The hell was that about?"

—

 _Mary,_

 _We have consolidated all of our legal efforts into Keeda's hands at this point. None of us want to admit it, but we have hit a dead end as far as anyone will listen. She is the only one with any power left to make them understand that lives cannot be swept into the sands of time like so many have done before. I will not sit idly by, though; there has to be another way. I need to find someone outside of these governmental channels that will help._

 _I have not been sleeping the same. For about a month now my dreams have been a gray fog, seeing vague shapes of places I do not know. While I will take this over my previous nightmares and the blackened void of unconsciousness, I am forced to wonder what it means. I feel like I can hear something faintly in the distance, but I am unsure what._

 _Regardless, I hope your dreams bring you peace. I hope your life brings you the kindness you deserve._

 _I hope you are happy, wherever you are._

— _Teritus_

* * *

I have every intention of finishing this story, I swear. D: I'll try to update at least once a month, but...yeah. It's a process, I know, (especially the world building side of things), but I'm working on getting things moving along.

Tunes: "The City Surf/Into the Fray" by Jamin Winans/Marc Streitenfeld, from _The Grey_ soundtrack: watch?v=LsYA5UkD9K0


	8. Your Song

[Your] Song

The smooth yet granular fibers of paper weighed heavy in his hands as he poured over the notes written upon them. The permanent scars of ink feathered like miniscule rivers of blood and tears, his spirit lost somewhere in their depths. It was hard rereading everything he had ever sent to her, albeit in rough draft form; wrong letters would be scratched out, notes were added on the side to include or exclude thoughts, large blots of ink dotting some pages where he fell into his mind for too long. The messages were normal at first, simple reiterations of conversations they had previously echoing through short paragraphs. They became longer, sad even, detailing the things he saw or experienced while simultaneously asking silently for help. It was around the time he started to have strange dreams about Sanctuary, though nothing as extreme as his current nightmares. Still, even if his pride would never allow him to admit it at the time, he suffered from waves of anxiousness, waking up in cold sweats and subconsciously isolating himself next to the nearest bottle of horosk. There were certain things that no one but Mary would understand, and it ate at him more than anything wondering if she had the same terror plaguing her every moment.

She had told him that she was moving from her grandmother's home to an Alliance facility, although she wasn't aware of the address during their last visual conversation. There was disappointment in her revealed eye after telling him that digital communication wasn't allowed, but said he should send physical letters instead; while it would be slower and she jokingly said she'd have to learn turian, it was better than nothing. He decided to make the most of it and continue learning human languages, specifically "Standard American English", to both impress his superiors into believing he belonged in his brother's regiment and to make it easier on her. Though he would send every message to her ancestral home, he would never receive a response. For almost six months he waited for a reply that would never come, writing diligently until the day he couldn't write anymore.

Sitting at his desk, the golden light of the rising sun reflecting off the dimly lit ocean and flooding into his room, Tertius scarcely looking away from his work. Briefly he would glance at the brass pendant on his nightstand, hoping it would give him the inspiration its former owner and friend once spoke of; though silly, it felt like speaking to it actually helped, like someone was listening to him vent all that came to mind. He threw out everything that could be considered scrap and kept the most complete drafts, folding them neatly into an old wooden wine box. It was almost cathartic in a way, remembering the emotions he was once indebted to and letting them go with each moment of reflection. As he sorted through a few scribbles and unimportant notes, however, he finally laid eyes on the sealed letter that had been buried since he arrived on that backwater world. He had scratched it on so many napkins, notebooks, and paper trash that he lost count, culminating in the first time he could write something relatively normal after the Twelfth Labour Strike. It was also the last letter he thought of sending before crawling back to the beginning with short, informational correspondences.

It was easier to lie and say he was still sending them as heartfelt as he had been, if only to keep people from asking too many questions. He had felt something that day, a sensation that he had seen in others but couldn't quite explain. Tertius grew numb to everything, if only to keep from admitting what he truly believed deep behind the plate on his chest. Nothing had changed saved for a hospital stay and a shift in career. In that way, nothing would change, and he could go on sending small messages as if she was still on the other end of them.

He wondered, then, if she really had been all that time. Had his words come off as cold and distant? Was there really something that could have been miscommunicated? There were a multitude of questions he asked himself in the darkest of night, drawing out the ache in his right arm with growing frustration towards himself. He thought that perhaps that was the reason for his changing dreamscapes, and ultimately why he was less hesitant to see Dr. Chakwas. At least with his appointment in the early morning, he could avoid any prying eyes from asking too much too soon.

Tertius made his way over to the Alliance facilities just as the light of day was cascading over the horizon, its rays checkering through the clouds and setting the fine, pale blond sand ablaze. A number of questions traveled with him, not just pertaining to himself, and he tried organizing them silently on his fingertips. Most were harmless enough, many being about his continued lack of decent sleep and the old human book he was nearly finished with. There was a pit, however, of things he wanted to say but dared not say them. Speaking of them might mean exploring them. It might make them real. He tried desperately to ignore them despite his curiosity, filling up his quota of questions with other, more mundane topics.

With a hesitant step, he paced himself into the lobby quietly, approaching the red-headed woman at the desk. She was more tuned to her surroundings than usual, running a tissue under her eyes while observing her face in a small, handheld mirror. Her tanned skin looked almost translucent with the light of morning bouncing off the tiled floor, her bright green eyes determined to rub the sleep from them. Tertius coughed again as he approached, watching her look up and beam at his sudden appearance.

"Good morning, sir!" she smiled, placing out the clipboard for that day's appointments. "How are you feeling this morning?"

He shrugged, "Could be worse. Yourself?"

"Oh, I'm doing much better," she replied. "I was a bit...off, for a while."

"'Off'?" he repeated, scratching an 'x' next to his name on the sign-in sheet. Apparently, he was the first to see the good doctor that morning. "I take it your not a rainy season type of person."

Tertius glanced up when she didn't respond, taken aback slightly when he found her staring at him. Her smile was gone, her eyes seemingly larger than before and unmoving. After an awkward pause, she let out a giggle, shaking her head.

"No, no, I'm not," she affirmed. "I'm definitely more of the sunshine and rainbows type."

"I noticed," he muttered, handing the clipboard back to her. "Is there anything else? I know this is sort of off-schedule for me."

"Nope! You're welcome to go through, sir!" she replied cheerfully. "Room 145, as always."

"As alwa—"

He stopped himself, hearing the opposite door unlock towards the patient facilities. There had never been a point where he could remember it opening, a noticeable draft skirting the floor as the first door parted, followed by the second. Tertius could see a figure behind tinted glass looking off to the side, presumably speaking to someone from their body movements.

"...And even if I believed you, which I _don't_ , why would anyone want to go back to that time anyway?"

Mary stuttered her steps as she trailed into the lobby, glancing between Tertius and the woman at the desk. She appeared almost startled, as if she were trying to grasp whether she was awake or not. Patting down the sides of her dress, she let out a small exhale, her face maintaining a mask of a content disposition.

"Good morning," Tertius nodded towards her, his left hand's fingers waving slightly.

"Good morning," she answered hesitantly, her gaze oddly fixed on the red headed secretary. Mary paused for a moment before looking at him with more relaxed features. "You're here early."

"Just here to see Dr. Chakwas," he replied, shrugging. "Nothing too exciting."

"About a book?" she asked, her brow lowering humorously.

His mandibles flicked a smile. "Among other things. Why, any particular reason you're up?"

"I don't sleep," she answered flatly, finally finding a cigarette to pull from her pocket. "Well, that and to get this in before the daily meeting."

"Sorry to hear that," he said quietly. "I'm not one to sleep well either."

"I don't think anyone does around here." She quickly glanced over to the secretary who wore an odd smile of confusion, Mary bobbing on her heels before walking towards the exit. "Good luck with your appointment."

"Thanks," he waved at his side, moving away from the desk. "If you need help lighting that again you'll know where I'll be."

She paused as the front entrance doors slid open, the heat of the day spreading across the floor in a vicious wave. A small laugh escaped her chest as she twirled the paper stick between her fingers in thought. Her image was framed in the golden light of morning, Tertius barely making out her subtle, joyful facial features beyond his squinting.

"Thank you for breaking the rules for me," she said monotonously, lowering her voice until it became hoarse.

Tertius chuckled, his own voice rising to mimic what he could recall. "When has this one ever been concerned with the rules?"

There was a beat that passed before they both shook their heads.

"Wow, Blasto 6 was worse than I remember," he ran his thumb along the orange tattoos on his cheek.

"Yeah, all that was missing was a kragon with an asari accent," she snickered briefly, turning towards the outside. "See you later."

"See you," he repeated, though slower in contemplation.

Tertius looked back for a moment at the woman at the desk, still smiling with her eyes fixed to the front door; it was as if she was still processing what she had just seen. He couldn't blame her, though, considering obscure movie quotes were not really to everyone's liking. There was a grin he couldn't help but keep on his face as he continued walking down the darkened hall, trying to settle his amusement before accidentally revealing it to the village psychiatrist. She seemed to be engaged in her own little world, however, seeing her pouring over a large manual containing wispy pages.

Tertius knocked on the ajar door before entering. "Good morning, doctor. Are you still available for this morning's appointment?"

Chakwas inhaled quickly and deeply, removing her reading glasses before looking up at him. "Officier Aquilin, my apologies, I lost track of time. I was just getting some light reading in for today."

"Not hard to do with the days getting shorter," he replied, his talons running along the back of the dark gray couch situated against the wall. His knees cracked when he slowly took a seat, watching as the doctor placed her 'light reading' underneath her chair. "Anything interesting?"

"Nothing particularly," she frowned, shaking her head. Her subtle but irritated shift in tone lead him to believe otherwise. "Just a few notes on regulatory affairs."

"'A few'?" he repeated with a grin, clearing his throat when she reached for her notes and her face remained unamused. "Anyway, thank you for seeing me."

"Of course, thank you for coming in so early," she replied, her annoyance falling away. Shifting her weight to one hip, she crossed her legs and began to write without staring at the page. "How are you today?"

"Better, oddly enough," he said, his voice sounding slightly surprised; it was strange to say it aloud regardless of however he might have felt subconsciously. "I'm almost finished with that book you gave me."

"Ah, yes, the history of the Taj Mahal," she recited, recalling momentarily what had been given to him. "What do you think of it so far?"

"I'm...not sure," he drifted slowly, clasping his hands between his knees. "I can't quite understand why so much would be put into a tomb for a single person. Well, two people, eventually."

"Is that strange to you?"

"I suppose not necessarily the act," he continued, "but...hm. How do I say this without sounding insensitive?"

"Please, feel free," she chortled loosely with a waving hand.

"It's just...why would someone spend all the time and resources building something so extravagant for someone who isn't even there anymore? He had people to take care of, lives that were starving due to famine, and he...basically gives up living after his wife suddenly dies. Why?"

A long bout of silence hovered for a time, Dr. Chakwas observing Tertius's face as various thoughts passed behind his eyes. He had pondered the extensive history lesson and managed to simplify it into a few short questions, but it had never occurred to him to ask them aloud. Speaking about it really did change his perception, making an otherwise distance and ancient story something more tangible. It was concerning how real it felt, involuntarily rolling his left wrist in his right hand.

"Sometimes," Chakwas spoke softly, "grief can be paradoxical, regardless of its origin. It can build the most beautiful feats of architecture that will have generations remember the lives it stood for, yet it can also destroy what little remnants are left beyond just a memory. It's a balancing act within a storm of burden that all life with some semblance of emotions has to bear. It can either be weathered, whether healthily or not, or it can drown the bearer and those around them."

"How do you manage it then?"

Chakwas shrugged. "It all depends on the circumstances. In the end, you tread above the water gently and try to make it to shore."

"Hm," he hummed shortly, sitting back. There wasn't much more he wanted to discuss on the matter for the time being, thinking of ways to change the subject quickly. "An interesting but depressing note."

"True, but I do encourage you to read the rest. The history following the initial build is fascinating," she replied, flipping over her notepad. "Now, how have your dreams been? Have you been sleeping more than the last time I saw you?"

That wasn't exactly the topic he wanted to switch to so abruptly.

"Uh, it's been fine," he answered, pausing to find her look up slowly for further explanation. Tertius rubbed the back of his neck, unsure how to properly word what he wanted to say; she was still the shrink he didn't need a hyper analysis from, after all. "Different, anyway. I don't know if it's more sleep, but it hasn't been as...difficult."

"Oh? They've changed then?" Her notes started to become a little more condensed. "Anything that seems off about them?"

"Actually," he replied slowly, "they've changed almost completely. I'm just not sure if it's for the better."

"Would you like to describe them?"

"Would I like to?" he muttered, running his thumb and forefinger underneath his eyes. His willingness to talk about it wasn't due to his wants, or even out of duty — the nightmare he had grown used to had altered so abruptly that, deep down, it began to worry him. "It still starts the same, staring at my wrist looking for messages, but when I look up its not the village anymore. It's this...facility, with cement buildings and white lamp posts. I'm outside, the area is empty, and every door I try seems to be locked. Pretty sure it's an Alliance facility, though."

"How so?"

"There are signs - placards - that are written in two languages, most of which being warnings. One is Standard English, which is why I can figure out what it says, and the other is...some other human language."

"Do you remember the spelling at all? Any indications of location or time?"

"I think it was 'a-ver-tiss-e-ment'?" He noticed her pen slow its pace, figuring she didn't want to dwell on the semantics of language for too long. "Like I said, there wasn't much to go on. Still, I keep walking and I end up in this courtyard area and there are these strange, wispy shadows, almost like small trees just sort of...jittering in place, like they were caught in a strong wind that wasn't there."

"Anything in particular stand out? Sounds or scents?"

"No," his eyes glazed over in thought, looking at the light above him. "Not until the back wall."

"Back wall?"

"This is where it gets strange, if you can believe it," he laughed inwardly. "There's this wall and it curves up from the ground and keeps going as if it _is_ the ground. The chain fencing continues vertically, the lamps stick out sideways, and…there's the people."

Chakwas underlined something gently. "What kind of people? More like the trees?"

"No, they're real, just...lying there, suspended on the wall. Some seem peaceful, others are contorted, painfully even, but they're all motionless. There are these lights, bright lights that are radiating from different parts of them, usually from their abdomens but sometimes their necks or sides or mouths."

"Is there anyone you recognize?"

Tertius remained quiet as the space above him felt distant, the shadows on the ceiling crawling into the vague shapes of his dreamscapes. Much like in his sleep, he couldn't seem to pull his gaze away, his eyes unwavering to the pinpoints of light floating in his vision. There was a small gap, however, like a blackened abyss that began to slowly pull him towards it, rendering him nearly as motionless as the images seared into his mind.

"Tertius—"

"I'm not crazy," he asserted quietly, lifting his head up to bring himself back to reality. "I know what this sounds like and I swear that's not it."

"What do you mean?"

Tertius's hands fell back to his side, noticing her writing was becoming a bit more attentive. The scratching of pen on paper in the deafening silence was almost unbearable. "You know what I mean. The men that start seeing things in the rocks down there, the weird dreams of dead loved ones they start thinking are real, the paranoia that the Reapers are still out there somewhere."

"Hm," she pondered quietly. "Perhaps this is simply stemming from the exploration of your grief. Was there anything said or done that pairs something to previous interactions?"

"No," he shook his head, feeling the pain in his right arm become more pronounced. "I can't say there was."

Dr. Chakwas had looked up after a time, her writing coming to a halt. It didn't seem like she thought he was crazy, nor that she was devising a solution for his troubles. His talons began to pull at the seams of the couch cushions, recognizing such an expression from his years at C-Sec; she had answers she couldn't or wouldn't say. Though he didn't have a reason not to trust her, there was just something off-putting that overcame him suddenly. His jaw clenched, burying anything else dredging up into his mind.

Perhaps it was the letters he poured over; sorting them and contemplating his mistakes seemed to be a reasonable enough answer. Perhaps vocalizing the thoughts of the matter, however basic, would help in the long run. That was the only reason why he agreed to meet voluntarily, after all — anything to stop the onslaught of change. Whatever the case, there was some sense of familiarity in his previous nightmares and, although his new dreams were quieter, he knew the dread he felt would only become worse before he got better.

—

"Can you believe this guy? Man takes his job _way_ too seriously."

Weekly meetings were certainly no one's favorite, but Anna was probably the least impressed out of anyone who wandered in to attend one. She recounted the times when being on an outpost world back in the day would always lead to new and interesting subjects, even if they really hadn't been. It became clear, however, that the same sort of "importance of the mission" diatribe was regurgitated by any and every commanding officer regardless of the setting and it became incredibly stale to sit through regardless of the setting. Vega, though not for a lack of trying, was no exception; Anna was neither amused nor enlightened by anything anymore, and she made it clear she wanted to be anywhere else. All Mary could do was try not to laugh.

"Our contingency plan is still viable so long as the treatments and resulting data are making good progress," Vega said, scanning over a manilla folder in his hands. "Though our efforts to make any headway in contact have seemingly stalled, the research teams are hopeful that further progress can be made."

"Did anyone just think to _ask_ the nanites about their feelings on the matter?" Anna whispered, watching Mary grin from underneath her raised hand. "I mean, I know they're biologically dead, cold, killing machines, but they can probably be reasoned with as much as the next guy."

"Says you," Mary breathed, pressing her fingers against her mouth.

"Damn right, says me. I'd make a bet they'd be a million times easier to deal with than doing the runaround with Sandra, but, you know." Anna shrugged when Mary rolled her eyes at her. "No offense."

"Furthermore," Vega continued, "we'll continue working with the turian and salarian teams to analyze the contents of the dig site. I don't have to remind anyone to keep their mouths shut to any suspicions Dr. Chakwas and her team have about those caves, but this is just a friendly reminder that any leaked information regarding this mission is a one-way ticket to a Noverian stockade."

"Can't be any more fridgid than his delivery."

Mary's lip were forming a grin, unable to contain a small snicker at the base of her throat. She followed it up with a cough when a few people shifted uncomfortably in their seats, Vega looking up briefly with a flickering glare in her direction. This wasn't a new timeline of events by any means, but it became clear that fewer people were able to hide their uneasiness.

"Lastly, there is to be no more radio or electronic communication devices anywhere inside the facility," Vega stated, tossing the notes onto the desk. "This includes the barracks. You want air time, you take it outside."

There was a sudden eruption of quiet grumbles, some outright voicing their discontent for the policy change. Mary could see Anna roll her eyes slowly, crossing her arms while shaking her head.

"I don't know why they care so much," she sighed. "All that comes through the atmosphere is either boring Alliance news or that one anti-project woman with an axe to grind."

"Yeah, I don't get it either," Mary replied, thinking she was quieter than the noise around her. "I mean, if they wanted to hear disembodied voices they could just take a walk through the caverns."

The sudden hush that fell behind her words was not what she expected, catching a few stares. She shrugged when Vega ran his thumb and forefinger along his brow, neither of them amused by the almost suffocating silence.

"Meeting adjourned. I'd like the speak with the research team afterwards, please," Vega said, flipping the folder closed on his desk with his gaze on his hands.

The groups of armored marines and scientists alike quietly grumbled and quickly made their exit, diverting their eyes from the woman who stood in the back corner with her arms crossed. Anna whispered that she would see her later, filing out with the rest and leaving her to the bitter sound of a door sealing behind them. Mary remained at her post and leaned against a low table, her left eye twitching to hear Vega sigh in frustration.

"You might have well just said you wanted to speak with me," Mary shrugged. "Considering I'm the only one on the research team here."

"You can't keep doing that," he stated, placing one hand on his hip with the other running circles around his temple.

"Doing what?" she replied coyly, although her irritated sarcasm was hard to hide.

"You _know_ what," his voice rose, trying desperately to control his temper. His fingers tapped along the wooden surface in agitation, shaking his head. "Be serious, even if you have to fake it in front of them."

"Why?" she offered a hollow grin. "Big, tough marines can't take a joke?"

"Because they're scared," he answered, motioning to the door. "They don't know what's out there, what it's doing to them. You laughing at their nervousness isn't helping."

"Oh, _I'm_ making _them_ uncomfortable?" she spat, stepping towards him. There was a moment that she could tell he regretted what he said, but couldn't help continuing. "Six inches of eezo reinforced armor not cutting it? Should we all be wearing suppression suits and stay in our cages until we want to be played with?"

"That's not what I meant."

"Of _course_ that's what you meant!" she shouted, the right side of her face becoming warm. "If they're so scared of the feeble then maybe they should have stayed on desk duty."

"That's not what they're afraid of," he spoke quietly. Mary took in a shaky breath to see him wince, almost as if he were hearing something sharp. A pause fell into the room, Vega slowly meandering to the other side of the desk and propping himself against it with his hands tapping along its edges. "You know why we're here. I'm sorry I have to keep dragging you to these meetings but until we can get a tangible routine going that command sees progress in, it's business as usual."

She shifted her weight to her left foot, "What _is_ command's objective here, exactly?"

"Mary—"

"No, you want me to be serious and I am," she pointed an accusatory finger. "Why _are_ we here? Really."

A nervous chuckle escaped his throat, his voice rising again slightly, "To help these people get better! And they are _getting better_ , we just need to figure out how!"

"Some of them, at least," she muttered, pulling at the seams of her right hand's glove. "So if these people get better—"

" _When_ they get better," he corrected, watching her glance up with a glare.

" _If_...What then? What happens to that information? What happens to these people? What happens with Sandra? What happens to—"

"Did something happen, Mary?"

She hesitated, leaning back onto her heels and finally feeling the sting of anger in her eyes. With thin, pressed lips she looked away, shaking her head shortly. Mary could feel him looking at her with concern, almost as if he was staring through her, and all she could manage was to cross her arms to hide herself.

"Nothing unusual, no," she said quietly, her nails digging into her clothing. "I just haven't been sleeping well."

Vega leaned slightly to get a better look at her face, "Did you talk to Dr. Chakwas yet?"

Her arms fell to her sides with an eye roll. "What's she going to do, drug me? Because that worked _so_ well that last time."

"Okay, okay," he smiled, holding up his hands defensively. "You don't like her, but she's just trying to help."

"She's trying to help command, you mean," she corrected, placing her hands in her dress pockets. "There's a lot of clout in finding the fountain of youth through mankind's greatest enemy."

"She's trying to help everyone," he replied, sitting up straight with a weary sigh. "I get it. You don't trust the Alliance and by extension you don't just her. No one expects that you should."

"I'm sure some people do."

"Well I don't," he said sternly, stepping up and placing a hand on her shoulder. "Sometimes the only people you can rely are they people that were there, and sometimes that's only you. While we're here, I'm responsible for every soul on this mission, including you. You need to start learning to trust someone, anyone, otherwise none of this is going to work."

Mary's gaze wandered from the floor to expose the bottom whites of her eyes, her head tilted to the side. "Like Vancouver?"

His grip slipped as he stepped back, his jaw clenching. Flecks of dust danced beneath the sterile white lights and filled the growing empty space between them, Mary's stare unwavering as he looked up. Vega ran his palm along the lower half of his face, trying to think if there was anything left to say.

"I'm not blaming you, obviously. You weren't in charge then," she laughed, the pit of her stomach sinking. "But those people are still out there. They haven't changed just because the Alliance slapped them with heftier sentences."

"That's why we came _here_ ," he pointed to the ground forcefully. "To prevent that from happening again."

"You don't know they're not here too," she replied, shifting towards the door. "Besides, we didn't come here for the safety of the patients. We came here because it yields the best results. You're only kidding yourself if you think any of those people care."

"You and I care," he stated. "We have to make that count for something. If not for these patients, then for the people still out there dying from these things."

"You know more than anyone it never works out that way. Anyone with the misfortune of remembering that, anyway," she answered quietly, weaving her way through the empty chairs to the exit. She stalled for a moment, chuckling loosely as she looked back. "I'll get back with you if I hear anything."

"Be safe out there."

Rounding the hall and heading for the exit felt like an eternity, even if her pace caught the attention of those loitering about. Her flat expression was hard to maintain as her breathing became labored, the cold white walls feeling like that were closing in to a pinch, the facility trying to prevent her from leaving. It wasn't until she passed the double containment doors into the lobby did she finally feel like she could stop, sighing shakily and leaning against the wall. Though her frustration quietly left her, a growing anxiousness slowly crept into its place, Mary glancing around at the shiny tiled floor as its pits and grooves cast long shadows away from the outside. There was a slight ringing in her ear when her gaze was drawn to the desk at the center of the room, a pair of green eyes staring back at her. The woman there smiled sweetly, offering a small wave of acknowledgement but remaining silent. There was something off-putting in the way the woman moved; she had been seeing it since they arrived and yet couldn't place why exactly. Mary always attributed to something in the air making her unreasonably paranoid, even if she was or not, and continued to do the same thing she always did when she left the building. With a faint smile and a nod in return, she darted towards the exit, unfazed by the hot afternoon air as it washed over her along with the sounds from the outside.

The ringing didn't stop, however, even after removing herself from the inside. The world around her was incredibly noisy, the waves crashing against the beach like static and the wind buzzing down from the atmosphere. The sand crunching beneath her feet sounded like popping wires, the chirps of insects echoing loudly as she moved up the shoreline and to a path that lead up the mountain. She crossed her arms tightly seeing the dimly glowing plant life jutting out from the dense brush around her, seemingly reaching out desperately to be noticed. Despite the life thriving all around, she felt an incredible sense of loneliness, some of which she couldn't be sure belonged to her. It wasn't until she reached the mouth of the upper cave system did her unwanted feelings escalate into something else and something succinct. It was something she hadn't felt for a long, long time.

There was plenty of commotion and teams of workers milling about, but the chamber of dark, glassy walls suffered from incredible emptiness. There was a sense of loss within the petrified ground, dragging her like a stone further forward into the dimly lit work site. The back of her ears burned and spread along the side of her face, the high-pitched toll vibrating in her hearing becoming almost melodic in nature. As her eyes shifted from the ceiling lights to the floor, she bit down on the inside of her lip hard, gazing into the massive hole separated only by a small, chain-linked fence. The more she stared, the more she felt pulled towards it, her knees locking to contain herself. Much like being sucked into an engine, though, fear encompassed her to the prospect that her fate was inevitable.

"Don't fall in now, it's a long way down from here," a flanged voice called out to her side, striking her with such a force that she felt reeled back into her own body.

Mary stuttered her steps slowly, trying to keep her balance while remembering to breathe. Her eye was unwavering to see the turian soldier standing beside her, seeming confused by her demeanor. To be fair, almost anyone would be, but she gave him credit for not appearing disturbed. Interestingly enough, he seemed the opposite.

"Sorry, didn't mean to startle you," he shook his head empathetically, scratching the orange tattoos along his cheek.

"Don't worry about it," she muttered, squinting her eyes in thought. His mannerisms were oddly familiar, but his cheery disposition in the gloom of the cavern made it hard to pinpoint where she had seen it before. "And you are…?"

"Ah, Captain Caien Aquilin, recon," he replied, extending a hand to shake. When she remained silently staring, his talons twitched as he awkwardly set it back on his hip. "You must be Mary."

Her features softened along with her stance after a moment, placing her hands at her side. "You're Tertius' brother."

"Oh, you've heard of me then?" he laughed, bobbing his head to the side slightly. "Only the annoying points, I take it?"

"Nah, he's sprinkled in some good things about you here and there," she smiled weakly. "Nice to meet you."

"Likewise," he nodded, motioning to the dark abyss beside them, "So, what brings you out to the edge of the world?"

"I'm here to talk to your CO. Know where I might find him?"

"You're looking at him," he said, shrugging after a moment when she raised an inquisitive eyebrow. "Okay, _acting_ CO, anyway. The major's down below making sure an excavation goes over smoothly. Last few times have been...interesting, to say the least. Anything I can help with in the meantime?"

"'Interesting'?" she pondered, glancing over the edge again. "How so?"

"Well, how do I put this…?" he muttered, rubbing the back of his neck. "A couple of the demolition guys, the ones that dig and place the charges, anyway, have been going a little off the walls lately."

Mary's fingers began to pull at her dress seams. "'Like claustrophobia, that sort of thing?"

"Kind of," he answered, swinging his gaze to the open abyss as well. "They've been going into these weird tunnels, saying that they're hearing people or seeing things. Some freak out thinking there's marauders or some other Reaper thing down there, others say they hear family or friends talking to them. The psychologists say it's just hallucinations from the dark and tight spaces. Even your Dr. Chakwas says it's—"

"From an unresolved form of latent PTSD," she interrupted flatly, quickly crossing her arms to face him completely again.

"Yeah…" he drifted, bringing his attention back to ground level. "I'm sure you guys have to deal with this sort of thing too."

"Pardon?" she caught herself from raising her voice, her eye twitching nervously.

"The Alliance. I guess I should say the marines, specifically," he answered slowly, clearing his throat with a comforting grin. "Sorry, I'm getting off-topic. Then again, I'm sure Tertius has warned you about that by now."

While the easy-going conversation was almost too easy to extract the information she came for, standing there on the precipice of darkness didn't sit right with her. Not only did it feel wrong to use the man's kindness in such a way, but it felt like that void _knew_ she was. A million eyes of judgement were making the right side of her face uncomfortably warm with embarrassment, wondering why she had even agreed to go up to the caves in the first place. Deep down she knew her reasoning, and it had nothing to do with the Alliance or what they wanted; it was still stupid to think she could fight with herself and somehow resolve past feelings of anger and resentment.

"No, I'm the one that asked," she replied, stepping towards the entrance. "Anyway, I should really be going. I'll just ask for a report or something later. Nice meeting you, sorry to bother."

"Hey, but, uh, wait," he began, waving his hands almost frantically in front of him. "There is something strange you should probably see, though. If you have the time."

Mary stopped with a sigh, gritting her teeth. There was a pull from her instincts to keep walking, desperate to get out into the open air again, but her feet remained firmly planted. She nodded shortly and gestured for him to lead the way, Caien standing more professionally as he walked on his heels towards moderately sized scaffolding along the side wall. Flood lights beamed beyond the opaque plastic sheeting that hid smaller work spaces, the area growing quieter than the heavy machinery milling about. She tilted her head in wonder when she thought she heard a soft, almost inaudible harmony, watching as Caien pulled the curtains back slightly and peered in.

"It's weird, right? _Please_ tell me you think this is weird," he whispered, pointing towards another turian whose back was turned

Mary squinted in the bright light to see him sitting at a desk and tracing out something with his left hand; a brief flicker of the light catching his orange tattoos confirmed her suspicions of who he was. Rolling her eyes, she stood back, the side of her mouth curving upward with pressed lips.

"He's just humming," she sighed quietly, shaking her head.

"Wait, wait, take out your translator," he replied almost excitedly, tapping the side of his head. He stood confident in his suggestion as she stared at him with growing aggravation, eventually plucking out the small device that sat nestled in her left ear. "Don't you hear that?"

"You're right," she deadpanned. "He's mixing words in there too. Almost like he enjoys singing."

"No, that's not it!" he waved his hand pleadingly. "He's singing in human!"

"English," she corrected after a moment of hesitation, placing the translator back into her ear. "The language you're looking for is English."

"Whatever, it's still strange, right?" he asked, shrugging. "I mean, what turian can even speak a human language—"

"I can hear you, Caien," Tertius said loudly, never looking up from his work. "Is there something I can help you with?"

"No, not me, particularly," he answered at normal volume, holding the curtain open. He motioned with a nod for Mary to enter before him, closing the sheet completely before continuing. "Somebody's interested in those odd carvings we found down below earlier, though."

"Spirits, always a rush job with these people..." Tertius sighed, holding his forehead in his right hand. "I'll be finished in a few days, I still need time to translate some of these symbols."

"Yeah, but you can still show some progress pictures, right?" he wondered, walking to his brother's left side and patting him forcefully on the shoulder. "Had to walk all the way over here for something unusual in an otherwise monotonous world."

"What? What are you talking...about," Tertius began in a huff, finding his frustration and bitterness suddenly expel from his lungs as he swiveled around on his stood. He watched as Mary's eyebrows flicked curiously, shrugging with a bounce on her toes. "Oh, uh…"

"I can come back later if this is a bad time," she pointed her thumbs to the plastic panel.

"No, no, it's fine, I just, uh," he drifted in thought, placing his pen down gently on his desk as he side-eyed his brother irritated, "wasn't expecting anyone today."

"I was just here to talk to your CO," she stated, walking up slowly beside his work table with her arms kept closely to her sides. "Your brother informed me that he's busy at the moment, so here I am."

"The major? What for?" he inquired and, although asked innocently enough, he could tell by the way her fingers clasped around her gloves that she was uneasy answering.

"She's here to see all the weird and spooky things we've been looking into," Caien's voice reverberated in an attempt to sound mysterious, only to cause his brother to shift his gaze almost dumbfounded at the behavior. It never took long to get the answers everyone was thinking about, even if it made the air obnoxiously uncomfortable. "Show her that carving we found the other day. The one with the head babies."

"Head babies?" Mary couldn't help but snicker under the sound of Tertius's groan, flipping through his thin papers.

"They're not _head babies_ , and I really hope you don't go around telling people that," he hissed, placing a large, neatly outlined sketch on top. He angled the light above better to get a better look, both his brother and Mary growing closer to examine it. "The problem is we don't really know _what_ it is. There's no markings or descriptors of any kind, and everyone I've talked to can't seem to agree on what it might mean."

The images scrolled across the page were unusual, to say the least. Bipedal creatures stood upright with one foot forward, outlined in hundreds of tiny dots. One carried a wrapped bundle of some sort in its arms, while another held a large flower at its side. There were a few, however, that stood out from the rest, given that their silhouettes were solid, dark strokes. In the center of these was the distinct outline of a Reaper, its appendages elongated into the limbs. Within the head and surrounded by the outstretched lines of the Reaper sat what appeared to be a smaller version of the creature, bowing its head with its hands pressed against the cranium. Tertius couldn't help but glance up at Mary from time to time, watching her expression become quietly sad.

"You sure these aren't Reaper thralls of some kind?" Caien spoke loudly out of the dull, Mary jumping at the sudden sound.

"No, these are different than the other ones we found," Tertius replied, tapping his talons thoughtfully. "All we know is that they're made by the same artist, given their dating and technique. It wouldn't make any sense to come up with two different visual depictions for the same things, especially since there's nothing to say what they are."

"Eh, I don't know. Maybe they wanted to try to rationalize what they saw," he shrugged, nodding towards the woman standing across from him. "What do you think, Mary? Strange, right?"

"Yeah," she forced a weak smile, continuing to stare down at the image. Her left hand extended almost subconsciously, running her gloved fingers along the dark ink and forcing herself to become distracted in the moment.

"Well, uh, I'll leave you to show the rest of the collection then," Caien's voice cut from out of another pause, tapping his brother more gently on the back of his carapace. "Let me know if you need anything else. I'm just going to go make myself look busy."

Tertius watched from the corner of his eyes as the plastic sheeting grew still from Caien's exit, offering no sudden movements as he looked back. Mary seemed completely detached from her surroundings, her exposed eye unwavering. She was just as haunting to behold as she was the first time he saw her at the facility; something plagued her troubled thoughts that she couldn't or wouldn't say. Unlike before, however, the wall of shock had finally crumbled around him, and he was left to his old ways of deductive reasoning.

"You know what these are, don't you?" he asked quietly, Mary's gaze meeting his own. The anxiety of her vulnerability was apparent, even to him, as she drew her arm away quickly and stood back from out of the light. He spoke again with a small chuckle, trying to set her at ease even if his rationalization stemmed from a lie. "I'm sure you've seen something similar working with your patients. If not through them and through research, right?"

Mary placed her hands in her pocket, staring down at her feet and burying her underlying emotions deep underneath them. "Maybe, but no concrete proof to give."

"I mean, it's better than whatever excuse I'll have to make up," he joked, his heart sinking watching her visibly flinch.

She laughed hollowly through her teeth, pressing the palm of her hand hard along her cheekbone. There were only so many ways she could hide her facade, and her mask was beginning to crack. It would have been fine anywhere else, with anyone else but him. Stepping back up to the table, her hands waved almost frantically with her speech.

"Someone's going to find out about it eventually, whether it's you who orders me or someone else, so I might as well make myself useful sometime—"

"Hey, you don't have to say anything," he stated with a softened strength. Mary hesitated, her fake sarcasm and jest collapsing into disquieted disbelief. Tertius shook his head, folding the image in half again and setting it beneath the pile at his side. "You don't have to do anything you don't want to."

Mary caught her breath, her voice raspy in her throat. Though she opened her mouth with an inhale a few times, she could never quite find the right words. Instead, she settled for whatever would come to her before he said anything else.

"But what about your project?"

"They'll believe whatever I tell them and then it won't matter since they'll come to their own conclusions," he sighed warmly, his mandibles flicking a smile. "One of the benefits of being the few people who can read dead, ancient languages."

"Is it now?" she inquired more lightheartedly, leaning her elbows on the drafting table. Somehow, she found that the closer she came to the light again, the more she began to forget where she had been. "Is that why you sing in English? For the challenge of it?"

"Ah, that good, huh?" he chuckled, resting his hands on his knees. "I was always better at writing than speaking."

"To be honest," she glanced away at his tapping left hand, "I've never actually heard a turian speak _actual_ turian."

"Well, we have different dialects," he scratched the side of his face in thought, "but that's neither here nor there really. Would you like to hear something?"

"What?"

"Do you want to hear me say something in my language?" he repeated, his bones creaking loudly as he stood.

Mary forced herself from smiling too hard, her brow lifted curiously. "You okay there?"

"Tell you what," he groaned, placing his right hand on his back, "you take out your earpiece and I'll tell you how I am. Then I'll take out my translator and you can tell me...well, just how truly awful my English speech patterns are."

"And how is that fair?" she scoffed. "You _know_ what I'm saying to some degree."

"I'll tell you what I said after and you can have me guess. Deal?"

Mary's lips flattened, unamused by the negotiations but humored by the whole state of affairs nonetheless. With a flick of her wrist she plucked the device from her ear once again, placing it gingerly in front of her. After a brief pause, she could hear him breathe deeply in thought, his teeth clicking with careful consideration. His voice drummed in a low, harmonizing tone, almost nasally vocalizing a series of short growls and hisses. From an outsider's perspective, it could have been mistaken for menacing; it was no wonder that the First Contact War escalated in the way it did if _that_ was the first sounds humans were approached with. Still, Mary didn't seem bothered by it. Tertius was hopeful in the way she tilted her head in interest, her smile remaining although her face began to contort in what he assumed was confusion.

"Wow, it's like the textbooks used to say. You really do sound like a dinosaur," she mused, quickly picking up her translator and replacing it.

"A what now?" he asked, not entire sure how to feel about her comparison.

"What was it you said?" she diverted, watching the changes in his expression closely.

"Oh, uh, just that I'm fine, but old age is catching up to me," he rubbed the back of his neck with a shrug. "That and the weather isn't doing my joints any favors."

"Okay. You're turn," she said quietly, waiting for him to grab the device nestled just above the crook of his left mandible. "But you have to close your eyes."

"Wait, what? Why?" he chuckled.

"I'll tell you what I said afterwards, but you don't get to lip read. You just have to play it by ear."

"That's fair," he nodded with agreement, setting the translator at his side.

Mary fiddled with her fingers in front of her, pondering how she wanted to reply. Though his eyes were closed and his head tilted down, it was clear he was trying to listen intently, trying to capture every word he could. Through the grinding sparks of nearby machinery and shouting of various foremen going about their business, Tertius was taken aback when he felt something press against his chest. Mary stood close enough that he could smell the scent of her hair, staring at him so intensely that it felt as if the world died around them. It struck him deeply as she whispered shortly, revealing that all that was left in the universe, her universe, was sadness and a deep, dwelling rage. When she stepped back and slipped her hand away, he laughed loosely to fight back any emotions that were building.

"Sorry, I must be worse than I thought," he said, pulling his eyes away from her and to the ground. "I didn't catch a lot of that. What did you say?"

Even though her flattened smile remained, her expression grew mournful, placing a hand on the drafting table. Slowly shifting her stance, she reached for the pile of papers across from her, sifting through them with her thumb before selecting the image from before. Spreading it out neatly under the lamp, Mary was almost methodical in her sensitivity to it, pausing for a moment before looking back at him.

"Ghosts," she proclaimed, placing her hands in her pockets.

"What? They're depicting...ghosts?"

"Yeah, or something like it," she said. "There are accounts of people hearing or seeing the dead, whether in their dreams or while they're awake. Lots of scientists think the Reapers used to project voices into thoughts to slowly influence organic life from the inside, even create a physical manifestation of friends or loved ones. It's no wonder they thought they were speaking to the dead."

"But what if it was the dead? Or somehow, they could rationalize it as them?" he thought aloud, reaching over and tracing his talon along the outline. "Maybe there's a reason there's a miniature version of this individual in the head."

"It's better to believe the Reapers are just imitations than to think they literally trapped the souls of the damned in their matrices."

"'Are'?" There was a brief instance where the corner of Mary's mouth twitched downward, Tertius letting the moment pass quickly. "Sorry, getting on my semantics shuttle again. Thanks for the insight, though."

"Sure," she sighed, shifting her weight and stepping past him. "I should be going. There's a lot left to do today."

"Hey, uh, wait, before you go," he stammered, subconsciously pointing his foot to block her path; he retracted it sheepishly when she tapped his toes with her own. "Would you like to come to game night at the end of the week? Caien and Keeda tend to have one every so often, I'm sure they'd love having you."

Mary stood back on her heels, blinking slowly in thought. Pulling out her lighter and a stark white cigarette, she bobbed her head from side to side, inching her way towards the plastic sheeting. Tertius sat back down and followed her with his eyes, but even she noticed how oddly, uncomfortably still he was.

"Sounds nice," she said to the tune of her lighter flickering to life. Mary took a small drag and blew it to the wayside, opening the curtains as she went. "I'll come to the next one. Let me know if there's anything else I can help with. Be seeing you."

"Likewise. See you later," he called after her, watching the translucent material sweep the ground and leave him once more to the muted hum of his thoughts.

His grin had faded even before his brother moved aside a side divider with the back of his hand, Caien finding him transfixed on the place Mary once resided. While his brother stepped casually up next to him, Tertius didn't even register him there until he nudged him in the left shoulder. Caien wore a look of confusion, wondering why Tertius wasn't even the least bit angry about his being there or the obvious eavesdropping.

"That's not what you said," Caien stated faintly, trying not to startle his brother.

"Yeah," he replied. "That's not what she said either."

—

 _Mary,_

 _As I sit here on a transport shuttle waiting to return to the far reaches of space, I begin to wonder what life would have been like if I had simply listened. Not just heard, but truly ever_ _listened_ _. Where would each of us be now? Would you have ever been with the Alliance, or would we have been on this transport together? Did we ever have to argue, or wonder if it was ever the last sunset? Would any of this matter anyway, or would it have all lead back to the places we are now? I can't imagine what it would have been like. I can't imagine much of anything anymore._

 _I no longer sleep like I used to, (although I know telling you this is selfish of me considering the circumstances). It's maybe three or four hours before I start to hear it again. The wailing. The crying. The high pitch screaming of a disembodied child that haunts me through the gray halls of some strange place. The patterns make me feel like the rooms are closing in on me, and the doors are too narrow to pass without making a concerted effort to bend and kneel. I do not know how much more I can take before my mind finally leaves me as well._

 _I wish you were here. I wish so much to any spirit that will listen that you were here and I could tell you how much as I miss you._

 _I hope you are happy, wherever you are._

 _-Tertius_

* * *

A/N Tunes, "Heart-Shaped Box, lullaby rendition" by Rockabye Baby: watch?v=69jFMhYNJUQ


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